image: IIHS
April 12, 2022 – After a severe collision last summer, Adrian Lund, the retired president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and the Highway Loss Data Institute in all likelihood owes his life to the improvements he helped usher in.
Lund, who retired from IIHS-HLDI in 2017, credits his car, a 2020 BMW 540i with saving his life. The model, a 2020 IIHS TOP SAFETY PICK, earned good ratings in all six crashworthiness tests, including the ones most applicable to Lund’s crash, the small overlap front and roof strength.
He remembers hanging upside down after the crash and noticing that he had room to move his legs. He had just been in a frontal offset collision not all that different from the many tests he had watched in the crash hall at the IIHS Vehicle Research Center. In those tests, the structural intrusion is often worst around the legs.
