The 2021 Hyundai Elantra and Santa Fe both earn TOP SAFETY PICK awards from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety when equipped with specific headlights.
For the Elantra, a small car, the award applies to the Limited trim. For the Santa Fe, a midsize SUV, the award applies to the Limited and Calligraphy trims.
Those vehicles come with good-rated LED projector headlights. Lower trims of the Elantra come with halogen headlights that earn a poor rating because they don’t provide adequate illumination on curves. Other versions of the Santa Fe come with LED reflectors that earn poor or marginal scores.
To qualify for TOP SAFETY PICK, vehicles must earn good ratings in all six IIHS crashworthiness evaluations, including the driver-side small overlap front, passenger-side small overlap front, moderate overlap front, side, roof strength and head restraint tests. They must also be available with a front crash prevention system that earns advanced or superior ratings in both the vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-pedestrian tests and good- or acceptable-rated headlights. For the higher-tier TOP SAFETY PICK+ award, good or acceptable headlights must be standard on all models, regardless of trim level.
The 2021 Elantra is available with two front crash prevention systems, one standard and the other optional. Both earn superior ratings in the vehicle-to-vehicle evaluation. In the vehicle-to-pedestrian test, the standard system earns an advanced rating, either avoiding collisions or slowing substantially in the various scenarios designed to simulate common pedestrian crashes. The optional system, which avoided hitting the pedestrian dummy in all the scenarios, earns a superior rating.
The same higher-level system that is optional on the Elantra is standard equipment on the Santa Fe. On the Santa Fe, the system avoided collisions in all the vehicle-to-vehicle and all but one of the vehicle-to-pedestrian scenarios, earning a superior rating. In the one test in which it didn’t avoid a collision, the scenario that simulates a child crossing the road from behind two parked cars, it slowed by 20 mph in the 25 mph trial.
SOURCE: IIHS