The NHTSA, or National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, is always hard at work trying to make the roads a safer place to drive and punishing naughty automakers for safety mistakes. However, the agency and car companies never really thought much about pedestrian safety. Since the NHTSA didn't really think of it, and since automakers only recently started considering it, the ratings didn't include tests for such safety tech. Come 2018 this could change, with the organization including tests to minimize pedestrian injuries in a new proposal.

This would toughen crash tests by measuring for features that decrease pedestrian injuries. Driver assist features and autonomous safety tech would also be tested, not just acknowledged as existing which is what is currently done. For more realistic results, new crash test dummies will also be implemented. However, will all of this do any good? Last year, the Chrysler 200 received a "Good" for the small front-overlap test which is the highest mark. The affordable four-door starts at just $21,995. For such a cheap car to do so well in these tests is pretty astonishing. Perhaps the NHTSA test proctors should consult the engineers at Chrysler to find more things to test for.