2009 Nissan Murano earns IIHS Top Safety Pick rating

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has just finished the latest round of their long running series of crash tests of new vehicles. This time around they evaluated nine different mid-sized SUVs and CUVs. IIHS does front, rear and side impact testing on each of the vehicles and in the latest batch of tests, only one vehicle got the Top Safety Pick award. The second generation Nissan Murano scored the coveted award for getting good ratings in all crash tests as well as having electronic stability control. While IIHS points out that overall safety is improving on this class of vehicles, some of them still aren't performing as well as they could. The Jeep Liberty and Wrangler Unlimited only managed a marginal grade on the side impact test, while the Kia Sorento was rated poor on the same test. Mazda's CX-9 and CX-7 got marginal rear crash results, while the Mitsubishi Endeavor did poorly when hit from behind. The only vehicle in the test to miss out on a good rating for the frontal offset test was the HUMMER H3 which was only acceptable. Check out all the ratings at the IIHS site.