High-quality headlights can make the difference between crashing into something (or someone) and avoiding an auto accident altogether. That's why headlight ratings played a large part in selecting cars for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's 2020 Top Safety Picks list. "Finding vehicles with the right headlights can be a challenge for consumers," says IIHS President David Harkey. "We wanted to reward automakers that have removed this obstacle." The IIHS took into account such vehicle features as crash prevention, pedestrian detection and passenger protection technologies to award 64 cars and SUVs with the 2020 Top Safety Pick or a Top Safety Pick+ rating. The slideshow above illustrates the 15 small and midsize cars to receive the IIHS Top Safety Pick+ award. "These are the vehicles that achieve the highest ratings in both our crash worthiness evaluations and our collisions avoidance evaluations," Harkey says in a video about the 2020 awards. Vehicle safety has come a long way since the IIHS, an Arlington, Va.-based nonprofit funded by auto insurers, first opened in 1959. The mission of its crash testing and ratings is to reduce traffic accidents, injuries, fatalities and property losses. The organization's vehicle safety tests include frontal crash tests, side impact tests, roof tests, a head restraint evaluation, and the headlight evaluation. "The headlight ratings," Harkey says, "have pushed automakers to pay more attention to this essential equipment." See also: |

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