Check before you buy - Kia K4 safety differences lead to dual rating

Check before you buy - Kia K4 safety differences lead to dual rating

Separate ANCAP safety ratings have today been published for the Kia K4 sedan.

The majority of K4 variants achieve five-star ratings, while the base variant achieves four stars.

Kia has opted to sell the K4 with varying safety specifications between variants – a decision that echoes the approach taken with model predecessor, the Kia Cerato, meaning consumers must carefully consider which variant they choose.

The Kia K4 Sport, Sport+, GT-Line, and S with Safety Pack are all equipped with a broad range of safety features and crash avoidance technologies - enabling five-star performance.

The K4 demonstrated sound crash protection across the range of physical crash tests.

In assessment of its ‘aggressivity’ - or the risk it poses to other vehicles in a crash - the K4 also scored very well, demonstrating a relatively low risk to collision partners.

The Kia K4 S, when the optional Safety Pack is not chosen, has different hardware and software than higher variants.

The omission of the hardware component and subsequent software tune sees its autonomous emergency braking (AEB) system unable to detect or react in T-bone intersection crossing scenarios.

Oncoming and overtaking emergency lane keep (ELK) functionality is provided on the base S variant – as it is on higher grades – however the tuning of the crash avoidance software fitted to the base S variant does not detect other cars or motorcycles in the adjacent lane, thus posing a greater crash threat.

These differences see the Safety Assist score for the S reduce by 13%, resulting in a four-star rating.

The Vulnerable Road User Protection score is also lower than that of higher-specified variants.

A dual rating is permitted by ANCAP in cases where specified active safety features are optional.

To qualify, these features must be available on base variants in the form of a ‘Safety Pack’.