Safety details matter for new 2007 cars

By Forbes.com

You're at the car dealership, excited to seal the deal on your nice new ride. You're assessing your options, and several sound sexy: heated cup holders, GPS navigation system, big alloy wheels.

One option that doesn't: side airbags.

But in a pinch, they could make a bigger difference than the navigation system, shiny wheels and coffee warmer combined. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) rattled the automotive world on Oct. 5 by announcing that side airbags that protect people's heads are reducing driver deaths in cars struck on the driver's side by an estimated 37%.

So are side airbags the seat belts of the 21st century?

Seat belts -- also humble and unsexy -- weren't required by law a few decades ago, and wearing them was not commonplace. Today, side airbags aren't always standard -- and as the safety bar ratchets ever higher, cars without them are lagging in safety ratings.

The impact of side airbags

The airbag effect shows in our list of the least-safe new cars on the market. In crash tests, a car with side airbags can be among the best performers; take the bags away, and its ratings can fall dramatically.

Case in point: Toyota Motor's (TM, news, msgs) popular Corolla four-door. It's reliable and a good performer in crash tests -- except for models without side airbags. Then it comes with the lowest possible side-protection ratings from the IIHS, and makes it onto our list.

Also on the roster: Chevrolet's Cobalt four-door, which does better with side airbags, but without them gets some "poor" crash-test ratings; Ford Motor's (F, news, msgs) snappy Focus four-door and Mazda's Mazda3 four-door, for which there are no IIHS crash-test ratings with side airbags; Saturn's Ion four-door, which has poor ratings with or without optional side airbags; and Suzuki Motor's Aerio and Forenza four-doors, which have standard airbags but still get poor side crash-test scores.

Many -- if not most -- new cars come a host of safety features: anti-lock brakes, which can preserve steering control and reduce stopping distances; traction- and stability-control systems, which increase control and stability on slippery surfaces; and daytime running lights, which help you see better and make you more visible to other drivers. Automakers insert higher-strength steel into collision-prone sections. They design seats, head restraints and bumpers to shield occupants in crashes.

Here's a list of 2007's least-safe new cars, according to insurance industry data:

• Ford Focus
• Mazda3
• Saturn Ion
• Suzuki Aerio
• Suzuki Forenza
• Toyota Corolla
• Chevrolet Cobalt

From 1982 until 2005, U.S. driver death rates per million passenger vehicles registered decreased 51%, according to the IIHS, an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing the deaths, injuries and property damage from crashes in the U.S. But most of that drop came from frontal crashes, in which driver death rates decreased 53%, due to such factors as front airbags, higher seat-belt use and more crash-worthy vehicles.

In contrast, driver death rates in side crashes decreased 42% during that time. And each year, 43,000 Americans still die in auto accidents.

To compile our roster, we looked at three main factors: a car's accident-avoidance features; results of crash tests, which are conducted in controlled environments; and real-world data, in the rates of injury claims filed per vehicle. (See details on our methodology below.)

Passenger cars, not SUVs

We were surprised that the list consisted entirely of small passenger cars, such as Ford's Focus, and the Saturn Ion. We expected to see at least one SUV on the roster. But a section on the Highway Loss Data Institute's (HLDI) Web site explains why the list looks the way it does: small two- and four-door cars typically have higher death rates and higher-than-average insurance injury claims.

Automakers whose cars made the list took issue with it. The main complaints involved the IIHS' testing procedures, the meaning of a worse-than-average rate of injury-claim filings and the fairness of singling out cars with one or more bad scores despite multiple good scores in other areas.

"You cannot draw these kinds of conclusions" from the data, a Ford spokesman said of the Focus.

A Toyota spokesman said that the Corolla four-door has several good crash-test ratings, despite a couple of "poor" IIHS ratings for certain models. The spokesman also pointed out that the car's injury-claim rate is better than those of several of its competitors. Ford argued against our inclusion of its Focus for the same reasons.

Both are true. But the injury-claim rates of the Corolla and Focus are still "substantially worse than average," according to HLDI -- even if other cars have worse scores. Some of the worse-scoring cars, such as Suzuki's Forenza, are also on the list -- though others, such as Kia's Rio and General Motors' (GM, news, msgs) Chevrolet Aveo four-doors, are not, because the IIHS hasn't yet issued them crash-test scores. (A caveat: Not every car on the market has a full roster of safety ratings. The IIHS and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (HTSA) do not crash-test all models, and crash-protection ratings and injury-claim reports are constantly being updated.)

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