The Chevy Trax and Buick Envista have both been a hit for their respective brands. Sharing the GM VSS-F platform, these crossovers are affordable, stylish, roomy, and fuel-efficient, making them popular with buyers looking for a great value. However, one of their weaknesses is their safety ratings.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) recently updated its side crash test with “increased severity to replicate the real-world scenarios in which people are still getting injured in side crashes.” The IIHS updated the test by turning up the speed and the weight of the “crash partner,” which is the vehicle hitting the car being tested.
The updated safety scores for the Chevy Trax and Buick Envista are subpar. While they both achieve the top “Good” rating in the small overlap front category, they both get the worst “Poor” rating in the updated moderate overlap front criteria. They get an “Acceptable” rating in the updated side test, which is one step below “Good.” “Marginal” is between “Poor” and “Acceptable,” and that’s the score these crossovers get for the safety of their headlights.
In the updated side testing for GM’s subcompact crossovers, the IIHS found an elevated risk of the chest and pelvis for the driver dummy and an elevated chest injury risk for the rear dummy. The Trax and Envista fared even worse in the updated moderate overlap frontal test. Elevated risk to the head and chest of the backseat dummy notched them “Poor” ratings.
The only category in which the Chevy Trax and Buick Envista get different safety scores is front crash prevention. The Trax gets a “Marginal” rating, and the Envista scores “Acceptable.” The Envista proved better at slowing down automatically for pedestrians in nighttime settings.
“Neither of these vehicles end up getting our Top Safety Pick award, but there are small SUVs that do receive either our Top Safety Pick or Top Safety Pick+ award,” IIHS Senior Research Engineer Becky Mueller said in the video below. “So, if safety is important to your vehicle purchase, there are options.” For reference, the highest-rated subcompact SUVs by the IIHS are the Honda HR-V, Hyundai Kona, and Mazda CX-30, which all receive the Top Safety Pick+ award.
Check out the full video for a closer look at how the Chevy Trax and Buick Envista performed in the latest safety testing.
Comments
Even ignoring the updated overlap test, these results are worse than I first thought and it will turn some buyers away. Like I said before, I can just imagine how the Trailblazer and Encore GX would do in these new tests. I really don’t want to know.
GM can’t build enough Trax’s, this will have zero impact on sales. My bet is about 1% of buyers consider safety picks when car shopping. Just like 1% consider 0-60 times and a few mpg when buying cars. Most buyer consider styling, utility, can I see out OK, are the seats comfortable, is it quick enough, does it get decent mpg. If safety is high on your list you are far better off in a heavy vehicle than any subcompact SUV. Momentum=mass*velocity.
I would strongly disagree. We’ve seen time and again bad results completely tank the sales of a vehicle. The most notable example being the Toyota Previa minivan, which it Toyota so badly they stopped selling the car, completely redesigned their minivan and brought it back under a new name (Sienna). GM needs to go back and do a red alert mid cycle and reinforce key areas for next model year.
“We changed a bunch of tests recently and expected these vehicles designed before the new test to pass them.”
People will always be injured in T bone crashes, especially in a small car. The only way to avoid that is don’t have the wreck and start jailing red light runners.
Get the previous model years, rated GOOD.
“We changed a bunch of tests recently and expected these vehicles designed before the new test to pass them.” I hope this is not true. Obviously the manufacturers need to be apprised of the updated tests to give them time to adjust.
Well these models were not designed for the “Turned Up Tests”. It would be interesting to see if and how they would do with the testing it was designed for. Yes it will perform worse if you increase speeds and weight.
These things need to kept in perspective. The insurance people want thing to always be a bit risky as they want to have a reason to charger you more on specific models.
This is like achieving a goal and then they move the goal line back 5 more feet. You can never win. These are good models and they are very safe. A bigger vehicle can and will do more damage yesterday, today and tomorrow. So chose what you drive carefully.
This is also why so many of these small cars are approaching 4,000 pounds. killing performance and mpg.
All this so so many can just drive drunk, distracted, on drugs and not wear their seat belts anyways
IIHS is an insurance lobbyist. They have no connection to any regulatory agency, such as NHTSA. Their primary interest is in showing how unsafe our vehicles are.
Don’t take these test seriously until they they start stating loud and clear that EV’s are deadly to everyone with out one. I drive a truck and I bet even a EV could do significant damage to it even if it passed the test. I also bet all the small Suv’s that passed would be destroyed by a EV. With newew automatic braking some of this may get better but I would rather get by a regular car than a EV any day.
I was considering a TRAX, but after seeing this, I’ll look elsewhere.
Same here, unfortunately. Or perhaps I’ll see how the 2025 Equinox does in similar testing. There are a number of choices that perform much better. Even a moderate increase in crash protection, for a similar price, will make a difference to many consumers.
Get killed in a Hummer, survive in a smart…….the tests mean something if you think they do, but having the people who back the insurance industry perform the tests and make them more difficult without notice could be construed as a biased source. It’s all relative in the real world. You can be killed in an accident that doesn’t set off one airbag or you can survive something that makes the car unrecognizable as anything other than a piece of modern art, there is very little rhyme or reason to car accidents. I don’t feel any less safe in my GTI or my Trax or my son’s F150. When it’s your time, it’s your time, ain’t no car gonna prevent that.
Flame on.
Meh, sorry a few of you didn’t like my posts. I doubt this will affect sales at all. We complain about the Government and car companies for fostering a nanny culture but then we clutch our pearls when the car doesn’t do as well as we feel it should in a test it wasn’t designed to “beat”? Pick your car, take your chances.
These tests don’t take into account the most important safety feature in ANY car: THE DRIVER. You can design the safest car in the world but if you put a mouth-breather behind the wheel or a TikTokker, you’re gonna get some casualties. “I was gonna buy one but not now oh nooooooo” . Puhleeze. What do you drive now? I wonder if it would do any better?
AhodieVW. To each their own. So no insult intended. But IIHS is not a government agency. And I personally never complain about getting unbiased evidence of the safety of a car and I don’t believe it fosters a nanny culture. Lots of accidents have nothing to do with the driver. Get rear ended by a drunk driver; nothing you can do about that. And it’s about probabilities. I can give you all sorts of random examples of people getting lucky, but it doesn’t mean it was the right decision.
I know the IIHS isn’t the NHTSA or a Government agency.
We learned to make up our shopping list from cars with top safety rating. Learned from one that saved our sons life when he was hit head on by a DUI driver.
Be aware that the General Motors vehicles meet all safety crash tests required by law. The IIHS loves to invent new crash scenarios and then gain attention to themselves by trumpeting ‘unsafe vehicles’. None of their tests were requirements when the vehicles were designed. How about dumping cars into a river and seeing which ones float? Some will do better than others, but none are designed for that criteria. I live in Florida, lots of vehicles end up in canals. Why doesn’t IIHS add that to their distractions for the public?