A safety feature worth seeking out

The 1948 Consumer Reports Auto Issue rated 38 cars (a lot for those times, but nothing compared with the 134 cereals in the same magazine, or the 262 autos in this issue). We wrote then: "Features and gadgets do not get a strong emphasis here. Consumers Union's evaluations are based on the definition of a good car as one that has the highest number of usable virtues and the fewest possible vices."

Sixty years later, that definition has changed little. Back then, usable virtues included "good road-holding ability"and good maneuverability. Cars that easily slid out of control were a real problem. Now that danger is greatly lessened by electronic stability control.

ESC is, we believe, the single greatest advance in auto safety since the safety belt. It selectively applies brakes to individual wheels to help keep the vehicle under control when swerving to avoid an accident or cornering on slippery pavement, and it can help a vehicle stay out of a situation that could lead to a rollover.

By model year 2012, the government will require automakers to include ESC on passenger vehicles. If all cars had ESC, some 10,000 lives a year could be saved, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Stability control has already proved itself. Equipped models are involved in 36 percent fewer fatal passenger-car crashes and 63 percent fewer fatal SUV, van, and pickup-truck crashes than vehicles without ESC, federal officials say.

But stability control is available mainly on higher-priced vehicles; many small, inexpensive cars don't offer it. We think they should now. In fact, ESC is so critical to the safety of all drivers and passengers that we're giving it a greater weight in our auto evaluations in this issue.

In the April 2008 issue, we reintroduced our CR Safety Assessment. (We had suspended it for three years while the government ramped up its rollover-testing program.) The overall safety score is calculated from a number of factors, including insurance-industry and government crash tests, our own braking and emergency handling tests, and the availability of key safety features. In addition, to be rated very good or excellent in our safety Ratings, a model must be available with ESC. Online, we have tools available to get a deeper sense of a vehicles performance, from the comprehensive model overview charts (accessed by pulldown menus on major pages within the Cars area), to the interactive New Car Selector (available to subscribers), where you can filter cars information by the factors that matter most to you.

For a model to be a Top Pick, we now require that it have ESC as a readily available option. That's why the Honda Accord, for example, is our pick in family sedans over the Nissan Altima. The Altima scored slightly higher in our testing but offers ESC only on the V6 with expensive options.

In 1948, a reader from Pharr, Texas, wrote, "Our car is old, we want a new one; but until your annual roundup of 1948 cars can be read, we refuse to sign any dotted lines." To which we said then, and we say now, we hope these pages will take care of that. Happy reading and safe driving.