Safest Cars to Drive

Shalom Lamm the New York real estate developer is known for taking acceptable risks in business. Nothing ventured, nothing gained goes the old adage, and Lamm is a big believer in the principle.

However, when it comes to driving cars, Lamm’s mantra is safety first. After all, 1.35 people are killed and between 20 to 50 million people are injured, many of them disabled for life in auto accidents across the world.

And crash injuries, according to the Center for Disease Control, is the 8th leading cause of death globally. And as far as those in the age 5-29 age group, auto accidents are the number one killer, surpassing even HIV.

The good news of course, is that pushed by governments as well as by groups such as the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety in the US and similar efforts worldwide, automobiles are safer than ever.

So how do you choose? It’s difficult because no brand across the world has a uniformly safe set of cars. Two or three will tend to stand out, while the results of the rest will be lackluster.

As to the safest overall brands, according to U.S. News, these include:

• The Genesis from South Korea
• Volvo from Sweden
• Tesla from the U.S.
• Mazda from Japan
• Mercedes Benz from Germany
• Subaru from Japan
• Lincoln from the U.S.
• Acura from Japan
• Hyundai from South Korea
• Audi from Germany
• BMW from Germany
• Kia from South Korea
• Alfa Romeo from Italy
• Honda from Japan

Looking over the list, it’s clear that top safety ratings are spread among a wide variety of cars.

How Do You Ascertain Whether a Particular Car is Safe?

It’s decidedly more difficult when you get into individual cars. In Europe, you rely primarily on the European New Car assessment program, NCAP. In Australia, there is the Australasian New Car Assessment Program. In the United States, there is the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on the part of the government and the Nonprofit Insurance Industry for Highway safety.

In 2021, brands that were superior in overall safety, frontal crash, side crash and rollover included Mazda, Hyundai, Honda, Kia, Chevrolet, Toyota, Lincoln, Chrysler, Volvo, Dodge, Acura, Jeep, Volkswagen, Audi, Mercedes, Nisan, Lexus, and Ford.

It should be noted that no manufacturer got 5 stars across the board for its safety ratings, but NHTSA did rate some individual cars such as the Toyota Camry 5 stars across the board

Many vehicles got 5 stars in most categories, but 4 stars in one or another category such as the tendency to roll over.

Generally, this means they are quite safe cars and if you only looked for vehicles that got 5 stars across the board, you will need to do a lot of internet scrolling.

What does this all mean? Before you buy a car, Shalom Lamm believes consumers should look at the manufacturer’s specifications for safety including the number of airbags, the safety of the rear passengers, and all the high-tech safety equipment such as hazard and passenger collision warnings.