How to Choose the Safest Car for Your Family
When it comes to choosing the best car for your family, safety is at the top of the list of important factors. The most common cause of death in children in the United States is unintentional injury, including accidents in traffic. Thousands of children die each year in car accidents, many of which could have been prevented with the right car. Child safety groups stress the importance of picking wisely when it comes to vehicles.
What should you look for in a vehicle as it relates to safety? Here is the definitive guide to help you choose the safest car for your family.
Look for a Sturdy Car
When it comes to safety, common sense indicates that bigger is better, and the data agrees. Larger vehicles are usually built to be more durable, and they have greater inertia. Their weight tends to afford passengers some additional protection. The two most common types of large consumer vehicles in the US are minivans and SUVs. Minivans come with a lot of great benefits over SUVs. They are less likely to roll over, one of the deadliest forms of car accidents in which a vehicle flips from top to bottom. They also have the added bonus of typically carrying more passengers. This is a huge advantage if you have a large family or often carpool to soccer games.
Safety Tech
Car safety has made huge advances in the last few decades. Following the installment of seatbelts in all cars in the '70s, each year companies have competed to make their vehicles safer than the competition. The annual improvements in safety may be hard to keep track of, but consumer advocacy groups like AAA do a good job of informing buyers in simple terms about the latest safety features in new models and how they stack up against those of other car manufacturers.
Crash Test Scores
Every manufacturer that sells cars in the US is required to submit their vehicles to crash tests. These are designed to measure how a car holds up in the event of a collision. Those who conduct the research test crashes at different speeds to measure a car’s resilience in both low-speed and high-speed collisions. The results are then published by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Buying a car is typically the second-largest investment that the average family makes next to purchasing a home. Make the most of your selection by choosing a vehicle that best protects your family.
Here’s another article you might find interesting: What Do Babies Remember?