How Do You Compare Safety Ratings When Shopping for a Used Car?
Ratings exist for old cars too
Safety ratings aren't just for new-car shoppers. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety — an independent nonprofit — maintains crash-test ratings going back through many model years, which means you can look up how the specific generation of the used car you're considering performed, not just how the current version does. For a used-car buyer choosing between a handful of candidate models, twenty minutes on the ratings site is one of the highest-value research steps available, and it's free.
How IIHS ratings work
IIHS runs its own crash tests and grades vehicles on a simple scale — Good, Acceptable, Marginal, Poor — across a series of tests: frontal overlap crashes (including the demanding small-overlap tests that many older designs struggled with), side impacts, roof strength, and head restraints. The organization also evaluates headlights and front crash prevention systems on newer models, and designates its top performers with Top Safety Pick awards. The full methodology and every rated vehicle are on the IIHS ratings site.
Matching the rating to the actual car
The most common mistake is looking up the model name instead of the model generation. A nameplate can carry the same badge for decades across complete redesigns, and ratings apply to a design generation — typically a run of several model years. When you look up a candidate car:
- Confirm the model years the rating covers and that your candidate falls inside them. A mid-cycle structural change sometimes splits a generation's ratings.
- Check which tests were run. Newer, tougher tests aren't retroactively applied to every old model, so an older car may simply have no rating on a test that didn't exist yet — that's an absence of data, not a passing grade.
- Note trim-dependent equipment. Front crash prevention and headlight ratings often vary by trim and options, which matters when comparing two listings of the same model.
Using ratings to compare candidates
Where ratings shine is in choosing between models at the same budget. Two similarly priced, similarly sized used cars from the same era can perform very differently in the small-overlap frontal test in particular — that test, introduced in the early 2010s, separated designs that earlier tests had rated similarly. If your shortlist has three candidates, look each generation up side by side on iihs.org/ratings and let the results reorder the list before you start visiting sellers.
What ratings can't tell you
A crash-test rating describes the design as built — it says nothing about the individual car in front of you. A well-rated model with undisclosed accident damage or serious structural rust doesn't deliver its rated protection. Ratings research pairs with, and never replaces, the car-specific diligence: the title-history check, the physical inspection, and the paperwork review. Think of it as the step that decides which cars are worth that per-car effort.