The Royal Automobile Club of Victoria has released the results of its inaugural Safest Cars awards – the awards broken into four categories in relation to vehicle price and style; passenger car versus SUV with the RACV using Australasian New Car Assessment Program (ANCAP) crash safety ratings and data to determine the results – in the under $30,000 passenger category, the Toyota Yaris edged out the Mazda 3 and Kia Cerato – the testers impressed with Yaris’s swag of safety gear including eight airbags, a front row centre airbag and in a light car segment first, the inclusion of autonomous emergency braking. Over $30,000 passenger car honours went to Mercedes-Benz CLA sedan which edged out Tesla’s Model 3 and BMW’s 2.0-litre 3-series. Safest SUV under $35,000 went to Mazda’s CX-30 ahead of the VW T-Cross and Skoda’s Kamiq twins while best SUV over 35,000 went to the new LandRover Defender ahead of Kia’s new CRDi Sorrento and Tesla’s Model X.

I’m David Berthon

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