OMG you all really have to check them out!!! euroncap.com. it's the european union's version of NHTSA, of sorts. it stands for euro new car assessment program. they have a nice index of cars organized by category. the biggest caveat is that there are only a handful of cars that are essentially the same vehicle in the US and europe (example, the honda ody is not sold in europe, so you won't find it there, but the CRV is there). but many german, swedish, and to a lesser extent, japanese, cars are sold in both the US and europe as essentially the same vehicle. another caveat is that even the same cars here and there may have different safety options that affect their safety ratings. also, the euroNCAP methods are different from NHTSA's or IIHS (they are similar to IIHS but at higher speed-- also, for side impact they do a "pole" test instead of a car-like ram). so some cars that rate poorly here rate well there, and vice versa. but it is at least one more piece of information that consumers can integrate into their car buying decisions. for example, my mazda3 is rated poorly by IIHS for side impact, because they didn't test a model with side air bags. but in europe, it was tested with the SAB/SAC and achieved a near-perfect score. the other great thing about euroNCAP is that they test cars with carseats!!! and they report how well the child dummies fared. overall, i am more impressed with their overall analyses for vehicles than NHTSA's or IIHS's.
as you say, RESEARCH, RESEARCH RESEARCH!