The Compact Car With More Safety Awards Than Any Other In The Last 5 Years

If you look at most “safest car” lists these days, you’ll see trends highlighting SUVs and crossovers. That doesn’t necessarily mean those are the safest types of car on the roads, as there are a myriad other variables to consider. The IIHS awards its highest honors to all segments, and for those who are shopping for a small car that’s likely light on fuel and easy to nip around the city in, you’ll want to know which is the safest.

Year after year, industry leaders like Mazda are putting in the work when it comes to developing small commuters and daily drivers to ensure they meet the same standards as larger vehicles desgined to carry precious cargo safely. As the most-awarded small car over the last five years, the Mazda 3 is a perfect example of the security you can enjoy behind the wheel of a compact when the automaker knows what it’s doing.

Mazda typically ranks somewhere among the IIHS’ most-awarded brands at the end of the year, and it earned the highest number of Top Safety Pick+ awards of any single brand for 2024. These include both the hatchback and sedan Mazda 3s, and the CX-30, CX-50, and CX-90 SUVs, along with the Mazda CX-90’s plug-in variant. So, what makes this small four-door so respected by the authorities that it’s earned the most IIHS accolades for its segment? IHS?

The Mazda 3 As A Compact Car: Ticking All The Boxes

Its awards indicate how safe a car it is, but how is the Mazda 3 overall as a compact car? Will it suit your needs as a fuel-efficient daily driver? The Mazda 3 is available in either a sedan or hatchback body, both of which are slight-sized and neatly packaged. Dimensions for both cars look as follows:

• Wheelbase: 107.3 inches
• Length: 183.5 inches
• Width: 70.7 inches
• Height 56.9 inches

Despite the fact that it has not had a major update since the launch of the fourth generation with the 2019 model year, the Mazda 3 lineup is modern and pleasing to the eye. It’s powered by a choice of engines, with the turbocharged variant being potent enough to elicit some actually enjoyable driving. Of course, fuel economy plays a role in whether a car ticks the “good car” boxes, and the sedan can manage as good as 27/37/31 mpg on the city/highway/comined with the base engine and FWD. Hatchback models with the same setup manage 27/35/30 mpg.

Most important to new buyers is pricing. 2025 models are already on sale, with pricing starting at $23,950 and topping out over $35k. This makes it one of the more affordable compacts on the market.

The Mazda 3 Is Quite Fantastic To Live With

Our time behind the wheel of the hatchback revealed how close to perfect it is as a small car.

Note that the Mazda 3 is one of the last compacts with a manual transmission in the US, but you’re restricted to the 2.5 S Select Sport Automatic Hatchback with manual transmission and FWD if you want this option.

All The Mazda 3’s Awards, And How It Won Them

Running down the Mazda 3’s list of accolades over the last five years, here are all the awards the compact has under its belt:

• Top Safety Pick+ (2020-2024)
• 5-Star NHTSA Rating Overall (2020-2024)
• Consumer Reports Recommended (2024)
• Car and Driver’s Editor’s Choice (2024)
• World Car Awards Car Design of the Year (2020)

Note that these awards all apply to both the sedan and hatchback Mazda 3. Not all of these awards pertain directly to safety, but safety is considered as a factor in every instance. Also worth noting: the Mazda 3 holds a perfect five-star rating with Euro NCAP, but this is based on a 2019 crash test, so it doesn’t make the five-year cut-off for the purposes of this list. Most notable for the purposes of this discussion is the Top Safety Pick+ award which the IIHS has awarded for five consecutive years.

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Crashworthiness

The current-gen Mazda 3 holds a nearly perfect score with the IIHS. The car earned an overall G for Good in every single category for small front overlap, and for almost every single category for moderate front overlap, including structure and safety cage, driver injury measures, driver restraints and dummy kinematics, and rear passenger injury measures. The one category where it scored an A for Acceptable overall was rear passenger restraints and dummy kinematics.

For side impact, the car holds a Good overall rating, but with an Acceptable for structure and safety cage, and for torso and pelvis driver injury measures. The car also holds an overall G+ for child seat anchors.

The Mazda 3 also holds a near-perfect score with the NHTSA. The one area where the car came up short was in rollover, where it earned four stars out of a possible five for the sedan. The hatchback, on the other hand, earned a perfect five-star rating in every single category. IIHS crash test scores between the hatchback and sedan are identical.

Safety Features

The 2024 Mazda 3 sedan earned a Good front crash prevention and seat belt reminders for 2024. Standard safety features in the 2024 Mazda 3 sedan include:

• Mazda radar cruise control with stop and go
• Blind spot monitoring with rear cross traffic alert
• Lane-keep assist and lane departure warning
• Driver attention alert
• Smart brake, forward

Optional safety tech includes:

• Traffic sign recognition
• 360-degree view monitor
• Cruising and traffic support
• Adaptive front-lighting system
• Smart brake, reverse and rear

The Mazda 3’s headlights scored an overall Good rating in the Premium and Turbo Premium Plus trims, while the lower trims only scored an Acceptable overall. The IIHS notes that, even in the lower trims, the “low beams never exceeded glare limits.”

Did The Mazda 3 Lose Any Points In 2024?

2024 saw the IIHS tightening their guidelines, and, as a result, the list of Top Safety Pick+ winners went down from 65 recipients to just 28 from 2023 to 2024. This mainly had to do with front-crash prevention measures, as cars that had trouble identifying pedestrians at night lost the coveted plus-sign. Other new guidelines saw side impact test energy ramped up by 82%, most likely to accommodate for the heavier EVs now populating American highways. The Mazda 3 was the only car in its class to ace this test.

If you look at the 2023 and 2024 IIHS Top Safety Pick+ recipient lists, you’ll find the sedan and hatchback Mazda 3 models both scored top honors, both years. The only area where the car was downgraded was in front crash prevention, where it was bumped down from a Superior rating in 2023 to a mere Good rating in 2024. This was also one of the few areas where the IIHS’ criteria was eased for the new year. In 2023, a car had to earn a superior rating in order to score a Top Safety Pick+. In 2024, the car only needs to rate Good. Perhaps owing to more stringent demands placed on the technology itself, with the IIHS giving automakers some time to catch up to the new standards. In fact, the Subaru Forester was the only small SUV to clear the bar for 2024.

Updated moderate overlap front impact tests were eased, as well. Acceptable overall ratings in this category are fine for 2024, as long as the vehicle scores an overall Good for small front overlap, and the updated side test.

Mazda’s long list of safety accolades is certainly impressive, especially with so many cars being bumped off the list for 2024. Between the Mazda 3 standing as the safest compact available today, and the brand’s SUV line populating the safest family car list, it’s hard to argue that they are anything but an industry leader when it comes to crashworthiness and safety tech. Considering that the sporty 2.5 Turbo Premium Plus model ranks among the 2024 model’s two safest trims, it’s also nice to see that safe doesn’t always have to mean boring.

Sources:
FuelEconomy.gov
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NHTSA.gov
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IIHS.org