Improved headlights earn safety award for 2020 Volkswagen Arteon

The 2020 Volkswagen Arteon, a large car, earns a Top Safety Pick award from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, thanks to improved headlights.

To qualify for a 2020 Top Safety Pick award, a vehicle must earn good ratings in six crashworthiness evaluations, including the driver-side small overlap front, passenger-side small overlap front, moderate overlap front, side, roof strength and head restraint tests. It also needs advanced or superior ratings for both vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-pedestrian front crash prevention, as well as an acceptable or good headlight rating.

The 2019 Arteon earned poor ratings for its three headlight variations. The 2020 model earns good ratings for the curve-adaptive LED projector headlights that come with the SEL, SEL R-Line and SEL Premium R-Line trims. The latter package also earns extra credit for high-beam assist.

The headlights that come with the basic SE trim are rated poor, preventing the model from qualifying for a Top Safety Pick+ award, which requires good or acceptable headlights across the board.

The Arteon's standard front crash prevention system earns a superior rating in the Institute's vehicle-to-vehicle evaluation and an advanced rating in the vehicle-to-pedestrian evaluation.

The Arteon avoided collisions in vehicle-to-vehicle tests at 12 and 25 mph. In the vehicle-to-pedestrian evaluations, it avoided crashes or substantially slowed its speed to mitigate the impact in tests that simulate an adult and a child crossing the road in front of the vehicle. However, it failed to slow down in tests simulating an adult walking in the road in the same direction as the vehicle.