American Kia Seltos secures a good score in IIHS crash tests

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has tested the 2021 model year Kia Seltos for the American market. The car scored high marks for crash worthiness and prevention but poor headlights prevented it from securing a safety award.

The Kia Seltos got good ratings in all six of the Institute's crash worthiness tests which include the driver and passenger-side small overlap front, moderate overlap front, side, roof strength and head restraint tests. In the US, the Seltos is offered with 2 crash avoidance systems - a camera system on the lower trims and a radar + camera combo on the SX Turbo trim. Both systems were able to avoid collisions at target speeds in vehicle-to-vehicle tests. The car slowed down substantially (to reduce severity of impact) or avoided the target in 3 different pedestrian scenarios.

One area in which the car got a "poor" rating were its headlamps. The Seltos is available with three headlight packages: base-level halogens, halogens with high-beam assist, and LEDs. All three were rated poor due to inadequate illumination on curves.

The India-spec Kia Seltos doesn't get crash prevention systems like the car sold in the US market.

Read the detailed report here.