Honda Motor Co. seeks to continuously provide high level of car occupant protection. And this commitment paved the way to the production of top safety picks autos. Recently, the Japanese automaker and its luxury arm Acura collected a total of seven top safety pick awards for 2008 from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

Top Safety Pick awards for the Honda Division include the 2008 Accord, CR-V, Element, Odyssey and Pilot. Top Safety Pick awards for the maker of Acura CL parts include the 2008 MDX and RDX. To stress, the automakers earned the industry's most Top Safety Pick awards for vehicles where head protection airbags and electronic stability control are standard equipment.

"Honda has consistently challenged itself to pursue vehicle safety as part of its core business strategy," said Dick Colliver, executive vice president of American Honda Motor Co., Inc. "American Honda will put more Top Safety Pick-rated vehicles on the road next year than any other automaker."

The annual award of IIHS recognizes vehicles that perform best in protecting passengers in the Institute's front, side and rear crash test evaluations, and includes only vehicles with electronic stability control plus head protection airbags.

The total 2008 model year sales volume of all Honda and Acura vehicles that achieve the Top Safety Pick award is projected to account for about two-thirds of the company's sales volume and go beyond one million units. Based on auto industry's sales projections, the figure is more than any other automaker.

The 2008 Honda Accord, with a target annual sales volume of about 400,000 units, epitomizes the Japanese automaker's commitment to safety.

Every Accord incorporates newly-designed side-curtain airbags and dual-chamber, front-side airbags with a passenger-side Occupant Position Detection System (OPDS); and active front seat head restraints that are designed to help reduce the severity of neck injury in the event of a rear collision, the Auto Spectator reported. An Advanced Compatibility Engineering™ (ACE™) body structure in the front of the vehicle makes the new Accord highly effective at absorbing the energy of a frontal crash and helps minimize the potential for under-ride or over-ride situations that can occur during head-on or offset-frontal impacts with a significantly larger or smaller vehicle. Vehicle Stability Assist and an Anti-lock Brake System (ABS) with brake assist are standard equipment on every Accord, the report continued.

Additional standard safety features of the Accord include a pedestrian injury mitigation design and a dual-stage, dual-threshold front airbags, front seatbelts with automatic-tensioning systems and load limiters. Also part of the standard equipment is the driver and front passenger seatbelt reminders and daytime running lights.

What's more, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has given the 2008 Accord sedan a five-star frontal crash safety rating for both the driver and the front passenger.