VIDEO: 2014 Subaru Forester tops national safety honors for small SUVs in new crash test

By Marcus Amick May 17, 2013

A new Insurance Institute of Highway Safety (IIHS) test suggests that when it comes to small SUVs, the 2014 Subaru Forester might be one of the safest on the planet.

The new Subaru Forester is the first vehicle to ace every aspect of the small overlap front crash test conducted by the (IIHS), which replicates what happens when the front corner of a vehicle strikes another vehicle or an object like a tree or a utility pole.

In the test, 25 percent of a vehicle’s front end on the driver side strikes a 5-foot-tall barrier at 40 mph. A 50th percentile male Hybrid III dummy is belted in the driver seat.

The Forester was the only one of 13 small SUVs to earn an overall rating of good in the overall front crash test.

The Forester and the 2013 Mitsubishi Outlander Sport, which earned an “acceptable” rating in the overlap test, are the latest vehicles to qualify for the Institute’s “Top Safety Pick+” honor.

Each of the other 11 SUVs earns either a poor or marginal rating.

“With the redesigned Forester, Subaru’s engineers set out to do well in our new test, and they succeeded,” says Joe Nolan, the Institute’s vice president for vehicle research in an official press release. “This is exactly how we hoped manufacturers would respond to improve protection for people in these kinds of serious frontal crashes.”

IIHS added the small overlap test last year after finding that the crashes accounted for nearly 25 percent of the frontal crashes involving serious or fatal injury to front seat occupants.

Here’s the video with some rather scary test crash footage and the finding report.

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Marcus Amick has been writing about the world of cars for more than ten years and has covered everything from new automobiles…

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