It seems Mazda has gone from "Zoom-Zoom" to "safe-safe," as it offers the most Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) Top Safety Pick + award winners of any automaker for the 2020 model year. Top Safety Pick + is the top safety billing the IIHS awards a vehicle, and it stands above the Top Safety Pick (no plus) title. The 2020 Mazda 3 sedan and hatchback, CX-3 and CX-5 crossovers, and Mazda 6 sedan all qualify. Meanwhile, the three-row CX-9 crossover nets a Top Safety Pick award.

Mazda's five TSP+ awards beat out Subaru's four, by the way. So, what does a Top Safety Pick + award mean? It indicates a vehicle has received "Good" ratings in IIHS's small and moderate overlap front crash tests, side-impact, roof strength, and head restraint evaluations, as well as "Advanced" or "Superior" marks for front accident detection and avoidance systems and "Acceptable" or "Good" headlight performance. It's all a bit of a mouthful that can be distilled to "car is more safe than other car."

Interestingly, IIHS hinges a Top Safety Pick + rating on headlight performance—something we agree with wholeheartedly. After all, if you can avoid a collision altogether—and avoid relying on an automated emergency-braking system—in the first place by simply being able to see better on a dark road, then that absolutely should factor into a car's safety rating as much as its physical crash performance. Clearly the five Mazdas we listed above all passed the IIHS's headlight exams with at least an Acceptable rating. No surprise, really, given that all five come standard with LED headlights. The Mazdas also come standard with the brand's i-Activsense active-safety-technology suite, which includes automated emergency braking (Smart City Brake Support) with pedestrian detection, adaptive cruise control, lane-departure warning, lane-keep assist, and automatic high-beam headlights.

Mazda added the improved headlights and automated braking support to the CX-3 for 2020, which helped push that model from a Top Safety Pick in 2019 to a Top Safety Pick + this year; the Mazda 3 similarly improved to + status for 2020. No word yet on whether Mazda expects the new-for-2020 CX-30 crossover to achieve a similar TSP+ rating, but remember—not all cars are tested by IIHS (not to mention the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA, conducts its own safety testing that produces separate ratings).