Surprisingly Safe: The 2008-2012 Honda Accord
This 2008 Honda Accord was t-boned by a 2005 Chevy Impala on April 22, 2013. The driver, my mom, walked away with only two bruises.
Full disclosure: I drive a 2011 Honda Accord sedan, so this post applies to my own car.
Today (September 12, 2022) marks the 15th anniversary of the release of the 2008 Honda Accord. The 8th generation of the venerable midsize car broke new ground in safety for its class. When it went on sale, it was the only non-luxury midsize sedan that was an IIHS Top Safety Pick in its base-model configuration (the coupe wasn’t tested by IIHS). The Subaru Legacy, the only other midsize sedan that earned the Top Safety Pick rating, didn’t earn it unless you ordered the optional electronic stability control. It was also the only midsize sedan on sale at the time where the dummies came away completely unscathed in all three IIHS tests (front offset, side impact, and rear), as in all injury measurements were rated “good”.Over on the NHTSA side of things, the report was similarly glowing. The Accord earned the full 5 stars for both driver and passenger in the 35-mph frontal impact test. The average 2008-model vehicle tested had a driver HIC of 432, with 43 chest G’s, and a passenger HIC of 486, with 43 chest G’s; these force levels are already pretty low, being near the boundary of a 4 and 5 star rating. The Accord? 221 HIC and 34 chest G’s for the driver, 258 HIC and 35 chest G’s for the passenger. In fact, the driver dummy in the 2008 Accord had the lowest HIC of the drivers of all 47 vehicles tested that year. Side-impact and rollover resistance ratings also ended up at 5-stars. Even when NHTSA and IIHS toughened up their crash test standards in later years, the Accord continued to do well. The 2011 Accord was the first to make a clean sweep of five-star ratings (5-star front, 5-star side, 5-star side pole and 5-star rollover) in the new, tougher NHTSA test regimen introduced that year. And when IIHS introduced a roof-strength test in 2009, the Accord got a high-end Acceptable rating – its roof still being over 2 1/2 times as strong as the federal standard required. With the Accord’s above-average rollover resistance, in reality it offers rollover protection equivalent to that of many Good-rated vehicles. Still, Honda upgraded the roof on 2012 models to earn a Good rating in this test too, an honorable move given that the redesigned 2013 Accord was just a year away (that body style is due for a Surprisingly Safe post of its own).It should be no surprise that the Accord’s death rate in real-world crashes was 35% lower than the average midsize sedan of its era. 
See the green dot (driver) and red dot (passenger)? That’s how far inside the 5-star range the Accord’s injury measures ended up after a 35-mph full frontal crash test.
