Long before beginning our Subaru Forester Six-Month Road Test--and before the brand's recent sales surge--the Forester had built quite a reputation as one of the safer small utility vehicles or crossovers on the market. Today it lives up to that reputation; and that holds whether we're speaking of empirical results, or our own observations of what make a car feel safer from behind the wheel.
Turns out there are plenty of both types of reasons. What makes the Forester one of the safest vehicles on the road? It's a combination of serious occupant-protection measures and smart structural engineering, as well as packaging benefits like good visibility, all-wheel-drive traction that helps stability and confidence, and some seriously useful accident-avoidance features.
The 2014 Forester doesn't quite add up to a perfect 10 (like the Mazda CX-5), by the federal and insurance-industry crash-test results that weigh heavily in how we rate vehicles in this category; but in our full review of the 2014 Subaru Forester you can read more about all the safety that's offered in this compact but very family-friendly vehicle--and how we think the Subaru might have a subjective/feature-based edge.
Click on to see the six things that we see as exceptional about the Forester's safety.
Subaru EyeSight safety system
Last year, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) named Subaru's EyeSight system the single highest-performing in a round of testing that included accident-avoidance systems costing many times as much. The NHTSA also notes the Forester's forward collision warning and lane departure warning systems as 'Recommended Technologies.'
EyeSight is available on Forester 2.5i Touring models, as well as 2.0XT versions like ours. On our top-of-the-line $32,995 2.0XT Premium, we have the $2,400 package that includes EyeSight along with push-button start. We've had good experiences with it in general, without any major false alarms to speak of; although we have noticed that sunset light will render the system unusable at times.
2014 Subaru Forester
2014 Subaru Forester XT Six-Month Road Test
2014 Subaru Forester IIHS crash test
That all adds up to a Top Safety Pick+ rating for 2014—among just 22 vehicles in all that have achieved the new accolade so far. Two other Subaru models (Legacy and Outback) have been named Top Safety Pick+, while two others (Impreza and XV Crosstrek) have been given the Top Safety Pick nod.
2014 Subaru Forester NHTSA federal crash test
The Forester earned a four star result (again out of five stars) in the federal rollover rating, although that was based entirely on a geometric calculation of its center of mass as the vehicle didn't tip in the agency's dynamic test.
The feds have, by the way, already extended those results to the 2015 Forester.
2010 Subaru Forester
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