Only 2 2024 Kia SUVs Earned Top IIHS Safety Awards
Safety is a massive concern in the automotive industry. Auto manufacturers like Kia have pledged to increase safety ratings across the entire lineup. The 2024 Kia Telluride and Kia Sorento are the only options with top ratings, though.
Which 2024 Kia SUVs are the safest models?
Give a round of applause to the 2024 Kia Telluride and 2024 Kia Sorento. These Kia models are the only options in the lineup that earned top Insurance Institute of Highway Safety honors.
This means that the Kia Sportage, Seltos, EV6, EV9, Niro, and Soul feel short. Nearly every Mazda SUV earned top honors, four Subaru vehicles got awards, and seven Toyota models won top honors.
The 2024 Telluride is actually safer than the Sorento. The Sorento is a 2024 Top Safety Pick while the Telluride is a Top Safety Pick+.
Top Safety Pick and Top Safety Pick+ honors are awards based on different crash tests including the moderate overlap front test, driver-side small overlap front test, passenger-side small overlap front test, and day/night pedestrian evaluations.
Each test provides insight into the safety cage/structure, injury measures, restraints/dummy movement, and ability to avoid collisions.
The side impact test was recently updated to include a 4,200 lb sled instead of a 3,100 sled to better represent the size and weight of today’s vehicles.
The 2024 Kia Telluride has outstanding results with mostly ‘Good’ scores. This is the highest score possible and it only received three ‘Acceptable’ ratings.
While the 2024 Kia Sorento is still extremely safe, it received an ‘Acceptable’ rating for its seatbelts and child restraints.
The child seat anchors are considered to be too deep in the seat. But they are easy to find, attach, and maneuver, and aren’t easily confused with other equipment.
But the Sorento actually received more ‘Good’ ratings than the Telluride. The headlight section is missing from the Sorento’s rating page but the Telluride earned ‘Good’ scores.
Maybe if the Sorento had headlight ratings to display then it would be a Top Safety Pick+ designation. Updates could arrive soon as more tests are conducted.
