Can the 2018 Toyota Camry Meet These 3 Safety Challenges?

Update Alert: Please see the newest info on the 2018 Camry's safety ratings.

The all-new 2018 Toyota Camry is just now going on sale. Being the top-selling four-door car in American, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety wasted no time testing the all-new design. Testing began mid-August and should be complete and published some time in September unless IIHS holds the results back a bit in order to couple the report with other similarly sized vehicles (as it sometimes does). The 2017 Camry is a Top Safety Pick Plus-rated car, but will the new 2018 earn that designation? We see three challenges to doing so for the Camry.

2018 Toyota Camry - Automatic Emergency Braking

The first challenge for Toyota is automatic emergency braking and forward collision prevention. This should be a slam dunk for Toyota since it was the first large-scale automaker to move towards standard active safety. Nissan and Mazda have since followed suit. The 2017 Camry did not have standard active safety, though, so will wait and see, but do expect the 2018 Camry to have Superior-rated forward collision prevention.

2018 Toyota Camry - Small Frontal Overlap Crash Test

If the $140,000 Tesla Model S cannot earn a Good score on the small frontal overlap test (given two tries) it would follow that it is a challenge for any automaker. However, that is not really the case. The Model S is an old design and Tesla simply does not know how to engineer a car to pass that test. Toyotas almost always pass this test (although the RAV4 had a surprise result recently.) We are confident that Toyota can pass this test on the upcoming Camry and earn a Good score.
- Related Story: Don't buy a new car until it passes this new test

2018 Toyota Camry Headlights

A headlight test score of Acceptable is required on at least one trim to earn the Top Safety Pick Plus rating. It has vexed automakers like Mercedes, but Toyota has done pretty well and the 2017 Camry had optional headlights that could earn the Acceptable rating. It will be a surprise if one of the trims does not make it, but this one is tricky. If anything could cause the Camry to miss the top score, this is it. Will every trim score Acceptable or Good? Doubtful.

Torque News will report on the Camry IIHS test results as soon as they are ready.