Avensis - How Safe For Child Passengers?

March 22, 2008

Hi everyone,

I have recently bought a 1.8 T3-X, one of the reasons I chose the avensis was its high NCAP safety rating. However I have noticed that the comments on child safety are not very favourable. Apparently children in stage 2 seats risk head injury in side impacts.

The Avensis has not actually been accessed for child safety, thats why theres no star rating, I suspect if it was tested it would achieve only 3 stars. For a car that sells itslef as a safe family car I find this to be misleading and also begs the question of why Toyota has not had the Avensis rated for child safety?

Had I been a little more thorough in my research I might well have opted for the BMW 3 series or V2 Passat, although I must admit I would miss the hatch.

March 29, 2008

Hi everyone,
I have recently bought a 1.8 T3-X, one of the reasons I chose the avensis was its high NCAP safety rating. However I have noticed that the comments on child safety are not very favourable. Apparently children in stage 2 seats risk head injury in side impacts.
The Avensis has not actually been accessed for child safety, thats why theres no star rating, I suspect if it was tested it would achieve only 3 stars. For a car that sells itslef as a safe family car I find this to be misleading and also begs the question of why Toyota has not had the Avensis rated for child safety?
Had I been a little more thorough in my research I might well have opted for the BMW 3 series or V2 Passat, although I must admit I would miss the hatch.

It seems as though crash testing to assess for child safety is really in it's early stages (I think that only models launched after a certain date have been tested, that's why the Avensis has not been tested presumably). Very few cars have test results at the moment. It's a shame - but thanksfully things are improving and in a few years there should be some useful data to compare all models. I think child seats are going to need to improve significantly over the next 10 years. Hopefully once all cars without isofix have eventually disappeared things will be better, and once they start producing better stage 2 seats (Maxi Cosi still don't do an isofix seat beyond stage 1). One of the factors that made me choose the Avensis is the 5 start (adult) NCAP rating, plus the fact that it's listed on the Maxi Cosi seat fitter guide (unlike the Honda Accord).

I'm not sure how useful the child safety testing is even now however. They're only tested with one brand of seat - so there is no way of knowing how a model of car will perform with another brand of seat. Most NCAP tests have used Britax seats - yet in extensive testing done by Which they generally showed Maxi Cosi seats to be safer.

What would be really nice (but I'm assuming not viable due to the cost of crash testing) would be to have results for every combination of child seat and car model.

My conclusion was that because there isn't any directly comparable data, and that the Avensis is generally a very safe car, it seemed a good choice despite the lack of NCAP data for child safety.