CLOSE IIHS has released their list of top safety picks for 2017 models. Here are their selections in the categories of small, mid-size, SUV, minivan, and large pickup. The Toyota Prius earned the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's Top Safety Pick+ honors after a series of evaluations, including this crash test.(Photo: Insurance Institute for Highway Safety)After years in which automakers had to add high-tech features to get top ratings in its survey, the insurance industry's safety arm is focusing on what many drivers will consider one of the lower-tech aspects of their cars — headlights.The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety said Thursday that it had stiffened the criteria for its highest safety honors, the Top Safety Pick Plus label, toughening standards for headlight performance.As a consequence, only 38 models from the 2017 model year have achieved the top score, down from 79 of 2016 models, IIHS reports. The group tracks about 200 models."We've raised the bar," IIHS President Adrian Lund said in an interview. "Automakers have not focused enough attention on whether or not headlamps are aimed such that they light up the road for the driver ahead of them."Interestingly, some luxury vehicles come with fancy headlights that shift with the curvature of the road in an effort to provide better illumination, but they don't always work better than the plain old-fashioned kind, Lund said. Many headlights are failing to provide adequate nighttime visibility or causing too much glare.AutoplayShow ThumbnailsShow CaptionsLast SlideNext Slide[1][2]"Some lights with the newer technology are not doing as good of a job as older headlights," Lund said.For 2017, Toyota and its luxury brand Lexus led all manufacturers with nine models earning the Top Safety Pick Plus designation. It includes Corolla, Prius and Camry cars, the RAV4 crossover and the Lexus NX and RX sport-utility vehicles.Honda and…

CLOSE Internet users can now stream live TV using DirecTV Now. The streaming service offers an extensive channel list cheaper than most cable providers. USA TODAY NETWORK The cost of cable television can be prohibitive for many consumers.(Photo: Getty Images)Nobody likes their cable company. And nobody likes seeing the seemingly constant increases in their cable bills.According to a September report from the Leichtman Research Group the average bill for cable television is $103.10 per month, a 4% increase from last year. And that's just for TV, Internet is not included even though many bundle them together.So what can you do as a consumer about these rising costs? Here are some tips on getting your TV and Internet bills down.Buy your own modemJust as you need a cable box to watch TV, you need a modem to connect to the Internet. Unlike the cable box, which is still hard to replace, you can easily replace your modem.Many of the larger providers including Comcast, Verizon FiOS, Time Warner Cable and Cox charge you an additional $10 per month to use their modem. Others like Optimum charge about $5.With the exception of Verizon, most let you buy your own third-party modem and there are a variety of options on sale at Amazon and others that provide the same speed and service as your cable company-issued modem.When buying make sure to confirm with your operator that it works for your provider and is certified for the speeds you want to get. Most providers have a list of approved modems. Here's where you can find the page for some of the larger providers: Comcast/Xfinity[1], Time Warner Cable/Spectrum[2], Cox[3], and Cablevision/Optimum[4].Word of note: the cable companies can help troubleshoot connection issues but if your modem breaks they won't replace it the way they would with their…