Looking for the safest car for new drivers? Well, this is the best place for that. Following is the list of the world’s seven safest cars for new drivers.

Are you a parent whose teen driver is ready to get a car of his/her own, or are you a teenager yourself who’s looking to buy a car? We’ve got you covered, provided that you are looking for the safest car for new drivers.

Below are some reasonable things that you might want to consider before buying a car for a new teen driver. We have covered everything starting from the insurance policies to how to get even lower rates than the average insurance claim rates, whether you should be looking for new or used cars by comparing them on an economic basis, cars that will offer you excellent fuel economy to the cars that will provide you with most safety features and many more.

Learn about teenage insurance policies and the safest cars for new drivers by reading on.

Insurance Of Teen Drivers: Safest Car For New Drivers

Before starting to look for the safest cars, you must have common knowledge of the Importance of insurance because buying safe cars isn’t going to help you at times of an accident with a truck or anything large enough.

There are two ways for getting an insurance policy for your teen driver:

Adding to your own policy

Your premium will increase in case you choose to add your young driver to your car insurance. According to a website called Reviews.com, young drivers aged 16 to 19 are the most inexperienced drivers and tend to have higher accident rates compared to all other age groups.

a) The cost of the coverage will increase by at least 152 percent.

b) As a matter of fact, the average increase in coverage is found to be 129 percent for girls and 176 percent for that of a boy.

Buying a separate teen policy

• Some or many of the parents prefer to buy their new driver a separate policy of their own. While this will increase the cost of the teen driver’s auto insurance, it will guard your family financially if the new driver is ever at fault in an accident. Also, your child won’t remain on your policy if they move away from you.
• Now that we know how to get young drivers an insurance policy, let’s hop on to a more economical side: how can we save money on auto insurance, which is essential to learn about the safest car for new drivers.

How To Save Money On Auto Insurance Of Young Drivers

Before adding your teen to your auto insurance policy, you must search around for a while to look for a company that might offer you a discount for young drivers. Many companies give discounts in the following scenarios:

1. A child who has maintained at least B grade in average
2. Driver being younger than 18
3. You should ask the agent about such discounts if he hasn’t already mentioned these.

According to a survey at Coverage.com, you can save up to $36 per year on auto insurance with proper discounts.

Now that we’ve talked so much about the insurance policies, let’s take the safety measures to a more practical level and talk about what safety features and safety technology we should look for in a car before buying the safest car for new drivers.

The Standard Safety Features that are Must: Safest Car for New Drivers

Having young drivers as one’s child always keeps one busy with the questions arising about the standard safety technology. Every parent has gone through situations worrying about their child’s safety. Well, why are we here then, just to solve your problems? We’ve noted down every safety need that new drivers and inexperienced drivers might need.

So just fasten your seatbelts because we are taking you for a ride through some of the essential safety features that must be present within the best cars for teens.

ACC or Adaptive Cruise Control

Adaptive cruise control is one of the best features that car production companies offer. Adaptive cruise control makes use of powerful and hi-tech radar sensors and keeps your vehicle at a safe distance from the ones you are following, and upon sensing an impending danger of accident, it uses the Automatic Emergency Braking to stop or slow down the vehicle.

Automatic Emergency Braking or AEB

Teen drivers who are addicted to their phones are also distracted by them while they drive, and this may result in a bad serious accident or injury. Automatic Emergency Braking comes to use in such situations and is designed to avoid an accident before it can happen.

Upon sensing that the accident might be unavoidable, it alerts the drivers with audible alarm sounds.

Dynamic Brake Support

This feature comes to use when the driver is in a pinch, and the AEB might not stop the car without external support. It adds brake pressure in a case when the pressure of AEB might not be enough

Forward Collision Warning

Forward collision warning works like an adaptive but just a little less; it alarms a driver that might be distracted enough not to see that the cars or vehicles in front are getting too close before it ends up in an accident. Thanks to the forward-collision warning system, distracted driving is becoming less of a problem.

Blind Spot Detection

Every driver, young or old, experienced or inexperienced, everyone has to agree that blind spots are one of the most annoying things while driving. Well, thanks to Blind Spot Detection, that annoyance has ended. Blindspot Detection keeps an eye on the areas on the driver’s blind spot and alarms the driver about another vehicle before the driver moves into its lane.

Lane Departure Warning

Lane departure warning is another blessing for any distracted new driver. It makes use of video cameras or lasers to keep an eye on the lane strips and alarms the user as soon as the vehicle crosses a lane strip and begins to enter another lane by an alarm or vibrating steering or maybe vibrating seat.

Some Other Features To Keep An Eye On

• Facial Recognition Software
• Rear Cross-Traffic Alert
• Adaptive Highlights
• Tire Pressure Monitoring System

All the above mentioned are a necessity for cars to be called the safest car for new drivers.

Insurance Institute For Highway Safety Rating Systems: Safest Car for New Drivers

Insurance Institute for Highway Safety is a non-profit organization that performs tests on its own and rates cars and other vehicles on the basis of its crashworthiness tests. Believe it or not, it doesn’t matter the price of cars; if it has about four or five stars in at least four IIHS crashworthiness tests, then it doesn’t need any good or acceptable ratings. Based on its ratings, many websites like ours rate used vehicles as well as new vehicles.

IIHS releases its list of IIHS top safety picks, including cars with excellent fuel efficiency and fuel economy. Those with good or acceptable ratings in at least four IIHS crash tests are listed in it. And all of these are necessary to get on our list of the safest car for new drivers.

IIHS crash tests include

• Moderate overlap frontal tests: In this test, a dummy is placed in the driver’s seat and the vehicle is crashed to a barrier that covers over 40 percent of the width of the vehicle.
• Passenger Side and Driver-side Small overlap tests: In these tests, the vehicle is rammed into a barrier which covers about more than 25 percent of the width of cars and SUVs. It ensures that the vehicle protects all the passengers.

• Side Crash Test: In this test, a situation is created where the car is hit with a truck-sized object to see how well the passengers in the car will be protected.
• Roof Strength Test: This tests the roof strength of cars and SUVs by creating a situation of vehicle rollover. If the roof holds up against a force four times the vehicle’s weight, then it gets good ratings.
• Head Restraint Tests: The head restraint tests are designed to check how well the seat and head restraints protect the passengers from neck injuries during a rear impact.

Getting 4 to 5 stars in IIHS ratings is a must to be called the safest car for new drivers.

NHTSA Tests And Ratings: Safest Car for New Drivers

NHTSA started performing tests on the performance of cars during frontal impact crashes in 1978, and soon after that, they added side pole crash and rollover crash tests as well. They only test new cars, which means they don’t test Limited or calligraphy trim or sports cars.

They rate cars for each test and rate them overall, with five stars being the top score. Getting about four or five stars is considered good ratings and is necessary to be called the safest car for new drivers.

Frontal Crash Test

In this test, a vehicle is rammed into a fixed barrier at 35 mph while carrying two dummies in the driver’s and front passenger’s seats to simulate a head-on collision.

Side Pole Crash Test

A side impact test is done to determine how well a vehicle can protect its passengers from a side impact from a vehicle that failed to stop at an intersection or something similar. For this test, a barrier weighing about 3015 pounds is crashed to the side of a still vehicle carrying two crash dummies at about 38.5 mph.

Side Barrier Crash Test

This test simulates a scenario where a driver slides off the road and crashes into a pole or anything of the sort.

For this test, a vehicle is pulled at about 20 mph at about 75-degree angle into a pole, thus hitting the car at the driver’s seat’s position.

Rollover Resistance Test

This test is carried out to check a vehicle’s susceptibility to roll over during highway-speed driving. This calculates a vehicle’s center of gravity and the vehicle’s probability of rolling over if the driver loses control.

After reading so much about the various tests and insurance policies, the list of the safest cars is just one paragraph away from us. Let’s just have a short talk about what your young teen wants.

Getting 4 to 5 stars in NHTSA ratings is a must to be called the safest car for new drivers.

What an Inexperienced Driver thinks he/she needs?

• Let’s talk facts; no teenager would love to drive a heavy car with too much curb weight; rather, they want a sleek and sexy-looking sports car with hi-tech safety features, thinking that would make them invincible. But let’s not forget that they have just entered the latter half of their teenage and are most probably still not mature enough to select a safe car for them. So it’s up to you to do it for them.
• The best-suited cars for teens are the ones that or neither too bulky, that have many blind spots, nor a lightweight car that might not even protect them in an accident. The vehicle must be just the right size for the driver to understand its physical features.
• Also, financially speaking, it isn’t a good idea to buy new vehicles for your teenage driver; instead, used cars are much more economically friendly unless, of course, you’re wealthy, in which case you should just buy a Rolls Royce. Just kidding, jokes apart, all of it was to tell you that your child doesn’t need any new cars with highly advanced lighting just for the interior. Rather advanced headlights like triple beam LED headlights would be better and many such driver-assist features.
• You must be wondering what cars will be the best option for your child, don’t worry, we have the answer to that on our list of the safest car for new drivers.

The Best Used Vehicles for Teens: Safest Car for New Drivers

Here we’ve listed for you the safest and used vehicles for your young driver that are also cost-effective since the prices listed are of used cars for teens taken from Kelly Blue Book.

• Our best choices list excludes vehicles that have higher than average claim rates under medical payment pr personal injury protection coverage and only include used cars and SUVs that have above-average reliability scores and have been proven best for fuel efficiency, crossing the typical mileage mark. Moreover, all the vehicles have been the Top Safety Pick or Top Safety Pick +, thus helping you to pick the right car among the best cars for teens.
• We have divided the safest car for new drivers into three sections based on the price of cars ranging from $10000 to $15000 to $20000 and thus excludes vehicles above that price range.

Best Used Cars for teens under $20000

2019 Toyota Prius

• The Toyota Prius is a parallel hybrid that means it consists of a gasoline engine as well as an electric motor and is designed to use an electric motor whenever possible.
• It has a good safety score and provides the owner with a spacious interior. With its vehicle stability control and brake assists, it’s completely understandable why its sales have increased so much and why it is the safest car for new drivers.
• You can get driver-assist features and advanced safety features with an LE or any model higher than that. It is also equipped with a lane departure warning system and has an impeccable fuel economy of about 58 mpg.

2017 Honda CR-V

• The 2017 Honda CR-V is a beast among other compact SUV’s and has been fully redesigned in 2017, but the features that brought it on our list of the best-used cars for teens is that now it provides the owner plenty of passenger space and enough cargo space also it has excellent fuel economy and great safety score.
• The EX model is equipped with advanced safety systems and adaptive cruise control, lane departure warning, forward-collision warning, and blind-spot warning. This is why it is on our list of the safest car for new drivers.

Best Used Cars for teens under $15000

2018 Mazda 3

• Coming under $15k Mazda3 hatchback is one of the best-used cars on our list of the safest car for new drivers due to its sporty look. It is a Top Safety Pick which is equipped with driver-assist features and also a rear cross-traffic alert.
• It has an impressive fuel economy and stylish interiors. It also comes with an impressive handling system, though upgrading it adds more safety features like lane departure warning. It is also available as a sedan, which is known for its impressive cabin and safety features and a super engine.

2016 Mazda CX-5

• The only Top Safety Pick + in our $15K range. Being a compact sporty SUV, it has enough cargo space and passenger space to accommodate your peers or parents and their luggage as well. It would be unfair not to include it on our list of the safest car for new drivers.
• The touring model is additionally equipped with a blind-spot monitoring system and rear cross-traffic alert.
• It is a permanent competitor for the best-used car title among others in this range due to its great fuel economy and advanced features. It is also known for its comfortability due to its suspension.

2018 Toyota Corolla

• This beauty of a sedan is the only one on our list of the safest car for new drivers that comes with the Toyota Safety Sense and a complete package of various safety features.
• Equipped with a forward collision warning, automatic emergency braking, and ABS as well, it can be considered a bang for the buck.
• With all these features combined with the 32 mpg overall fuel efficiency, it deserves to be called the best-used car.
• It has one of the best user reviews because of its roomy seating, good fuel economy rates, and excellent predicted reliability rating.

Best Used Cars for teens under $10000

2015 Honda Civic

• Coming up first on our list of best cars for teens or, should I say, the list of the safest car for new drivers is the excellent Honda Civic. I don’t think I need to sing its praises because every car lover knows that Honda Civic is known for its durability and safety comfort.
• It comes with various driver assists features such as a rearview camera, ABS, and many more. Also available as a sedan or a coupe, it can be considered as a good and compact car.
• The interior of this car is quite impressive, with a lot of space for both front and rear passengers, explaining why it is known for its comfort.

2014 Honda Accord

• The last car on this list of the safest car for new drivers is the Honda Accord. This sedan boasts of its passenger space and great stability control.
• The EX-L version would get you automatic emergency braking, forward collision warning, and lane departure warning.
• Also, having decent enough trunk space and a good fuel economy is a lot to give in this range.
• The Honda Accord is the driver’s ideal choice just because of its great and agile handling.

Conclusion

All the above-mentioned cars can be called Safest Car For New Drivers. Please tell us which among the above mentioned is your favorite and also tell us if you think if any other car also deserves to be on our list of the safest car for new drivers.

Also Read: How to block websites in chrome

Last Updated on November 11, 2022 by Rojalin Mahapatro