In one test, lower trim levels did poorly.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has published its safety rating for Hyundai Santa Cruz. The nonprofit organization has awarded Hyundai’s first passenger car with a bed a Top Safety Pick for the model year 2022.
However, the safety rating doesn’t apply to all trims of the Hyundai Cruz. The IIHS released that the Santa Cruz is only awarded the Top Safety Pick when it has specific headlights. This includes the SEL Premium or Limited trims. These are the ones where the Hyundai pickup received a high rating for their projector LEDs.
The Santa Cruz SE and SEL trims have halogen projectors to reduce low beams and halogen reflectionors to increase high beams. These headlights were evaluated on the IIHS safety evaluation and visibility was rated as ‘good’ for straightaways on the right side and ‘fairly’ on both the left and right sides. However, visibility on curves was poor in all four IIHS tests.
However, the high beam halogen reflectors were not rated adequate for visibility on straightaways or curves. This resulted in a ‘poor rating’.
The IIHS rated the Santa Cruz with all greens in other tests, including the driver-side smalloverlapping front, passenger side small overlap front and moderate overlap front.
It’s important to note that the Santa Cruz earned superior ratings in the vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-pedestrian evaluations for both the standard and optional front crash prevention systems.
Despite this, the 2022 Santa Cruz was a worthy recipient of the Top Safety Pick Award for the Lower Tier, particularly for the SEL Premium, and Limited trims. The entire range would have received a Top Safety Pick+ award if it weren’t for the halogens.