Safest cars for your teen driver

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Keeping Teen Drivers Safe on the Road

TRANSCRIPT: For those of us with teenagers at home, one of the most important choices we make is what car we let our kids drive.
 
Consumer reports helps you navigate through the choices.
 
They put all vehicles through a three part safety test. The first is a dynamic driving course to see how the car handles in different situations.
 
Jon Linkov:
We also look at the crash test results from the insurance institute for highway safety as well as the national highway traffic safety administration—they a have to do very well in those tests and they have to pass at least with a acceptable or marginal score with the new insurance institute for highway safety narrow offset test which kind of mimics two cars hitting each other at a glancing blow.
 
Jon Linkov is the deputy autos editor at consumer reports, he says if the car fails any of those tests they will not recommend it.
 
This year the Subaru Imprezza scored the highest.
 
We are just really impressed because of it’s all wheel drive nature as well as the fuel economy but the Honda Civic by no means is a bad choice.
 
One thing they don’t like about the Civic is the controls, the touch screen can be confusing and could be a distraction for the driver.
 
Linkov says the number one safety feature for any car is the driver
 
You can have a vehicle that doesn’t do well in crash tests but the driver  is safe and they don’t engage in any kind of risky behavior you’re going to have a much better opportunity than a crazy driver in a very safe car.