Safety should not be a concern if you’re buying a 2016 MY VW Golf, any VW Golf version, as the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has rated it as a Top Safety Pick+.
The Golf, Golf Sportwagen, GTI and the Jetta all score very strongly, according to the IIHS. As the Institute puts it, they “offer a combination of both passive and active systems that are engineered to meet or exceed current crash regulations.”
They all come standard with Automatic Post-Collision Braking System, and it you can include a whole slew of (optional) active components: Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC), Forward Collision Warning and Autonomous Emergency Braking (Front Assist), an active Lane Departure Warning system (Lane Assist), and Blind Spot Monitor with Rear Traffic Alert.
In the tricky small overlap crash test, the most difficult of all structural tests to pass, the Golf family is rated acceptable. It claws back some points and adds the plus to its rating by having all of the safety aids mentioned above.
The crash test footage is the same as it was for the 2015 MY cars; video posted below.