Study: The safest used cars to buy in 2024

A new report has detailed the safest used cars you can buy in Australia today, with 16 models including certain variations of the Mazda CX-5, Hyundai Tucson, and Toyota Corolla, scoring top points across all testing criteria.

The fresh data comes from the Monash University Accident Research Centre (MUARC), which analysed 9.4 million vehicles involved in police-reported crashes, as well as 2.6 million injured road users across Australia and New Zealand between 1987 and 2022.

And, perhaps unsurprisingly, the latest findings indicate a ‘significant’ improvement in vehicle safety in recent years.

According to MUARC, the ‘average risk of death or serious injury for drivers in 2022 models reduced by 36 per cent compared to those manufactured in 2002’.  

The study took 534 vehicles models, rating them across several categories including Driver Safety, Crash Avoidance, and Other Road User Safety, giving each vehicle a score out of five stars in each segment, with one-star being the worst for safety and five-stars being the top mark for relative safety performance.

Each vehicle was then given an overall score out of five stars, resulting in 110 models being allocated five-stars.

Whittling the field down even further,  just 16 vehicles were awarded MUARC’s ‘Safer Pick’ status, after scoring five-stars for both Overall Safety and Driver Safety; and at least four-stars for Other Road User Safety and Crash Avoidance.

In alphabetical order, the Safer Pick models include:

Budget-savvy buyers will be glad to know that nearly all the Safer Pick second-hand vehicles are available for less than $25,000, highlighting ‘the availability of safe options across various price ranges’.

The research also revealed the “relatively poor” occupant protection provided by commercial utes and people movers, while small and medium SUVS generally performed better compared to small and medium cars, ‘partly reflecting that the majority of these vehicles are newer’.

MUARC also found that small SUVs and light cars had the worst occupant protection of all vehicle segments, thought to be due to their lighter weight and often ‘poor specification for safety equipment’.

Professor Stuart Newstead, director of MUARC, said the updated ratings will empower consumers to make a safer choice both for them and the broader community.

“To minimise road trauma in the community it is important to choose vehicles that optimise safety in all the dimensions considered in the Used Car Safety Ratings,” said Newstead.

“We need to consider how the vehicle protects you as the driver in a crash, the injury risk the vehicle poses to other road users in the crash and how likely the vehicle is to avoid a crash altogether.

“The Used Car Safety Ratings ‘Overall Safety’ rating reflects the balance of performance of a vehicle across all these aspects. Choosing vehicles that perform best overall will have the biggest impact on reducing road trauma in our communities.”

The full report can be found at Monash University’s website.

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