The latest rankings of the safest cars you can buy have just been released, and this year, the American car companies are really lagging behind.
To get onto the new safety list, cars need a combination of things: A design that will protect your family in a crash, and technology to help keep a crash from happening in the first place.
On the whole, cars have never been safer. They all meet strong minimum standards. But these rankings separate the best from the rest, to help you find out which cars are the safest.
And in the highest category, Top Safety Pick Plus, there are 47 imports and just one American car, the Chrysler 200 sedan.
The testing is done by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety using crash tests captured by top-of-the-line slow-motion cameras.
Making the IIHS's top list for the 2016 model year was tougher than in previous years.
Now, a Top Safety Pick Plus vehicle has to do well in what's called the small-overlap crash test -- an impact to the front corner of the driver's side that simulates your car plowing into a tree or a pole.
And a top car also has to have a highly-rated automatic crash prevention system.
"If a vehicle senses an imminent collision and the driver isn't reacting, then the system kicks in to automatically brake the vehicle to prevent the crash, or at least to reduce the severity," IIHS President Adrian Lund explained.
Here's the breakdown of Top Safety Pick Plus vehicles by manufacturer:
- Toyota / Lexus / Scion - 9
- Honda / Acura - 8
- Volkswagen / Audi - 7
- Subaru - 6
- Volvo - 5
Six more American cars and trucks did make the second tier of the safety list -- which is just called Top Safety Pick.
You can see the whole list on the IIHS 2016 Crash Test Results website.
