Look how quickly other companies such as Toyota moved when the small offset crash test was first introduced and many models got poor ratings.
Again...the poor ratings were a means to generate further insurance revenue by giving a poor rating. The offset crash accounts for only ~6% or frontal crashes. And the risk of having a serious injury in the grand scheme of things is fewer than 2%.
So are they really interested in saving lives or generating income?
![](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/corecgi/tileshop/tileshop.fcgi?p=PMC3&id=376478&s=28&r=1&c=1)
And there is a real world correlation between crash test results and injuries. The tests represent what is a worst case scenario. The IIHS says from their insurance information, the small overlap crash results in 25% of deaths in a frontal collision. This has an effect on payouts for crash victims.
If in the same crash, someone driving a vehicle with a 'Good' rating manages to walk away practically unscathed, but in a vehicle that has a 'Poor' rating, the person is in serious trouble, you can sure bet the insurance companies will raise rates on the vehicles with 'poor' ratings to cover the fact that people are statistically more likely to be hurt in that vehicle. If you were in a small overlap crash with a Nissan Quest, you would be lucky to normally walk again, compared to a Toyota Sienna or a Honda Odyssey.
It should be noted that Europe has a similar organization, Euro NCAP which also conducts crash tests, and rates them publicly, and of course, these test results are panned by automotive journalists to their readers. Most notable example is the Rover 100, which was withdrawn from production when that model got the worst rating possible (1 out of 5), and sales promptly collapsed.