NHTSA Says 102 Cars Meet Its New Pedestrian Safety Standard, But There’s a CatchRoad & TrackStephen RiversMon, September 21, 2026 at 6:25 PM UTCAdd us on Google102 Cars Pass NHTSA's New Test But There's a CatchPlan Shooting 2 / Imazins - Getty ImagesFor decades, the National Highway Traffic Safety Agency's familiar five-star safety ratings have focused largely on how well a vehicle protects the people inside it. As of the 2027 model year, however, that's changing. The agency has added pedestrian protection to its New Car Assessment Program, evaluating how the front of a vehicle protects a pedestrian's head and legs during an impact.The new assessment awards up to 36 points across head, upper leg, and lower leg protection, with vehicles needing at least 21.6 points (or 60 percent) to meet NHTSA's performance criteria. And now, we have the first results.NHTSA's press release says 102 vehicles from 10 manufacturers make the cut. That's encouraging, but we wanted to know exactly which vehicles were among them. There was just one problem: NHTSA initially didn't give us a handy list of those 102 vehicles. So we went digging through its ratings database, checking every 2027 vehicle currently listed and its pedestrian-protection result via the agency's public API. NHTSA later provided Road & Track with the complete list, allowing us to cross-check our findings against the agency's own 102 entries. The two lined up remarkably closely, though NHTSA counts some body configurations separately, and doesn't treat every qualifying database entry as a separate model.Toyota Is All Over This ListToyotaThere are currently 123 distinct model year 2027 make/model entries in NHTSA's database, of which 97 simply say "Meets Performance Criteria." Another five carry the label "Various Results," but include at least one trim that meets the standard. Add those together, and you get exactly 102.AdvertisementAdvertisementToyota leads by a mile with 26 qualifying model entries, followed by Lexus with 17. Subaru has 16; Nissan 11; Honda and Mazda eight apiece; Hyundai, Infiniti, Acura, and Kia three each; Mitsubishi two; and Ford and Tesla each have one. There is an accounting wrinkle here: NHTSA's manufacturer field assigns some Subaru EVs to Toyota Motor Corporation, so manufacturer totals don't perfectly correspond with the badge on the vehicle.Not Every Version of Each Car Actually PassesThe bigger catch is buried inside those "Various Results" vehicles. Take the 2027 Kia Telluride. NHTSA says the LX, S, EX, X-Line EX, SX, S-Line SX, SX Prestige and X-Line SX Prestige meet its criteria; the X-Pro SX and X-Pro SX Prestige do not. It's similar over at Hyundai: the Santa Cruz SE and SEL Activity meet the criteria, but the XRT doesn't. Likewise, several Tucson Hybrid trims qualify while the XRT Pro does not.Ford's lone representative is the Explorer, but only its Active trim currently has a qualifying result; NHTSA says results aren't available for the ST-Line, Platinum, ST, and Tremor. The Nissan Armada works similarly: SV, SL, Platinum, and Platinum Reserve qualify, while results aren't available for the PRO-4X. In other words, NHTSA appears to count a model among its 102 when at least one version meets the criteria, not only when every version does.Who's Missing?VWPerhaps the biggest names absent from the 102 are Audi and Volkswagen. Both appear in NHTSA's 2027 database, but neither currently has a model among the qualifying group. That doesn't mean they failed. In fact, that's an important distinction: NHTSA lists pedestrian test results as "Not Available" for vehicles including the Audi A6, Q3, Q4 E-Tron, Q5, and others. (It's unclear whether these models will be tested down the road; Road & Track has reached out to NHTSA for more details.)AdvertisementAdvertisementStill, the data gives us a much clearer picture than NHTSA's headline number alone. The agency may have 102 models it can point to, but Toyota and Lexus account for more than 40 percent of them, two brands currently have no results that put them on the list, and even some of the vehicles that do qualify contain trims that don't.You Might Also LikeIf You Can Only Own One Car, Make It One of TheseThese Are the Most Popular Cars by State
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