The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, or IIHS, is an independent non-profit scientific organization that evaluates the safety of most cars and trucks on sale today. Its mission is to reduce deaths, injuries, and property damage from motor vehicle crashes through research and evaluation, and through public education. Its crash tests and other vehicle safety tests are more rigorous, wide-reaching, and comprehensive than those of the National Highway Traffic Administration, which is part of the United States Department of Transportation.
The organization has continuously implemented new, more rigorous tests and safety standards to evaluate and rate the safety of new cars through its ranking system, and it awards the vehicles that perform best in its wide array of tests with Top Safety Pick+ awards. Automakers are not required to conform to IIHS guidelines, but most have chosen to produce new vehicles that are designed to perform better in IIHS tests, and the Top Safety Pick+ has become a coveted achievement that appeals to consumers.
IIHS announced on Tuesday that it will further strengthen the qualifications for this award in 2027 by requiring Top Safety Pick+ winners to have an intelligent speed assistance (ISA) device that detects when drivers exceed the speed limit and issues warnings. It is also planning to require award winners to have impairment detection devices by 2030 or sooner, which will monitor driver intoxication and impairment and prevent anyone with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.08% or higher from driving. Time will tell if automakers decide to produce new vehicles with these features in order to receive meet IIHS Top Safety Pick+ requirements.
Impaired driving deaths represent nearly a third of all road fatalities today
Automakers have made massive strides in automotive safety over the course of the past few decades, due in part to the work of IIHS. Its rigorous tests and publicly available safety ratings and crash test videos have encouraged automakers to improve their vehicles’ safety. IIHS president David Harkey said, “As part of our 30×30 vision to cut U.S. road deaths 30% by 2030, we are committed to addressing the risky — and often illegal — behavior that underlies most fatalities today. One way we plan to do that is to leverage our ratings and award programs to encourage automakers to adopt this new class of safety technology, just as we got them to improve vehicle structures, airbags and collision avoidance systems.”
Harkey announced these changes at a roundtable discussion organized by the prominent community organization Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), which advocated for stronger laws against, and enforcement of drunk driving. MADD resulted in significant reductions in drunk driving fatalities in the 1980s and ’90s, but that progress has stagnated since then. IIHS analysis found that DUI prevention technology could save more than 10,000 lives per year.
Intelligent speed assistance device requirements come first
The timeline for institution of the impaired driving detection devices is unclear as of now, though the IIHS says to expect this requirement to be added by or before 2030. IIHS will update its Top Safety Pick+ criteria before the impaired driving detection requirements to include ISA devices in 2027. Data shows that 29% of all crash fatalities in 2023 — 11,775 deaths — occurred in speed-related crashes, so the impending requirement for Top Safety Pick+ winners to include ISA devices aims to decrease those deaths. Harkey said, “the sooner we can start getting these features into vehicles, the sooner we can make risky-driving deaths a thing of the past.”
All vehicles sold in Europe have been required to have standard ISAs since July last year, and studies have shown significant reductions in speeding by drivers of vehicles equipped with ISAs. There are active and passive ISAs, with passive systems issuing a visual or audible warning when drivers speed, while active ISAs can include increased resistance against the accelerator pedal for speeding vehicles, and limiting engine power so drivers can only accelerate up to, but not over the speed limit.
A 2025 IIHS survey found that more than 60% of U.S. drivers would accept a system that issued audible and visual warnings when they exceed the speed limit, and about half would accept an active ISA system. If Jalopnik readers were asked the same questions, I don’t think the results would be quite so positive, though. What do you think?
