Volkswagen announced a selection of vehicles from its lineup received a 2015 Top Safety Pick Plus rating from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), including the 2016 Volkswagen Golf four-door, the Volkswagen Golf SportWagen, Golf GTI four-door, and the Jetta sedan. The new award has been handed out to the pair of Volkswagens thanks to the addition of new active safety technology like adaptive Cruise Control (ACC), Forward Collision Warning and Autonomous Emergency Braking (Front Assist), an active Lane Departure Warning system (Lane Assist), Blind Spot Monitor with Rear Traffic Alert, and Automatic Post-Collision Braking System.
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To achieve Top Safety Pick+ honors, cars must receive a “Good” rating (the highest possible) in moderate overlap, front, side, roof, and head restraint tests, as well as an “Acceptable” rating in the small-overlap test that has been the scourge of many otherwise safe models in the last few years.
Both systems were already available for some time, although, they were only offered to the premium models. To assess the performance, points are awarded based on the braking and warning performance in the tests. The Driver Assistance Package for the Jetta costs $950 but only includes adaptive cruise control, forward collision warning and autonomous emergency braking.
The 2016 Golf, Golf GTI, Golf SportWagen, and Jetta TSI® models will be arriving in dealerships during the month of August.
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It’s important to note that the 2015 versions of these models don’t meet that Top Safety Pick+ standard, even though in each case they’re structurally unchanged from 2015 to 2016-and that 2016 models only meet that top standard with a key option package.
