IIHS hands 2026 Nissan Kicks a Top Safety Pick after rear belt fix, Audi Q3 rated poor

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety published a new batch of crash ratings on 22 October 2026 covering six vehicles. Five of them failed to win an award. The one that did, the 2026 to 2027 Nissan Kicks, only qualified because Nissan changed the rear seats and rear seat belt load limiters partway through production. IIHS says only Kicks units built after June 2026 earn the Top Safety Pick.

The other cars in the round were the 2026 to 2027 Audi Q3, the 2026 Chevrolet Trailblazer, the 2026 Toyota RAV4 and its plug-in hybrid version, and the 2027 Volkswagen Jetta. All of them came unstuck in the same place, the moderate overlap front test.

The test that keeps catching carmakers out

IIHS rebuilt this test in 2022 to put a second dummy in the seat behind the driver, and tightened the scoring in 2024 so that most of the marks now depend on how well the rear belt stays on the pelvis and how much force it puts into the chest. A lap belt that rides up off the pelvis and into the abdomen is the classic failure mode, and it is what the Q3 still does, which is why it is rated poor in this test despite changes Audi made.

The Kicks shows how narrow the engineering fix can be. The car was redesigned for the 2025 model year and started out poor in this test. After the rear seat and belt load limiter revision in June 2026, the same shell rates good. No new structure, no new airbags, just better control of how the rear belt feeds out and where it sits.

The Kicks still missed the higher Top Safety Pick+ because its standard vehicle to vehicle front crash prevention system rated marginal under the 2.0 protocol, while its pedestrian detection rated good. For a Top Safety Pick, IIHS requires good or acceptable headlights across every trim plus acceptable or better results in the moderate overlap front, small overlap front and side tests. The Trailblazer was marginal overall. The RAV4 was acceptable in moderate overlap front, and the plug-in hybrid was marginal.

Why this matters for Bharat NCAP

Bharat NCAP currently puts child dummies in the rear, not an adult one, so a belt that misbehaves on an adult rear passenger does not cost a car points in India. That is the gap IIHS has been pushing on for four years, and it is worth watching as India's protocol is rewritten.

The draft AIS 197 Revision 1, which MoRTH has proposed as Bharat NCAP 2.0, is due to replace the present protocol in October 2027 after the existing guidelines expire on 20 September 2027. It moves to a 100 point system split into Crash Protection at 55 percent, Vulnerable Road User Protection at 20 percent, Safe Driving at 10 percent, Accident Avoidance at 10 percent and Post Crash Safety at 5 percent. The crash matrix grows to five tests, adding a 50 kph full width frontal, a 32 kph oblique pole and a 50 kph mobile rigid rear impact to the existing 64 kph offset frontal and 50 kph mobile barrier side impact. ESC and curtain airbags become compulsory for any model that wants a star rating, and the five star threshold rises from 70 points in 2027 to 2029 to 80 points from 2029 to 2031.

One clarification for Indian readers. The Kicks in these results is the North American car, not the Kicks that Nissan sold here, so the rating does not transfer to anything in an Indian showroom.

Sources

• Nissan Kicks joins ranks of IIHS award winners, IIHS, 22 October 2026
• IIHS crash test results for Nissan Kicks, Audi Q3, Toyota RAV4, Motor1
• Toyota RAV4 narrowly misses safety award while Nissan Kicks is a Top Safety Pick, Cars.com
• Govt proposes Bharat NCAP 2.0 with wider crash tests and tougher ratings, Autocar India