A year earlier, a British research institute rated Beijing a third-tier city on a par with Warsaw and Bangkok.
The institute rates on a scale of good, acceptable, marginal and poor.
Some of the nation's top-selling S.U.V.'s and pickups were among those the institute rated the lowest.
By comparison, to achieve the same proficiency in Hebrew, which the institute rates as "hard," requires 44 weeks, Mr. Bernhardt said.
The insurance institute rates vehicles in five crash tests on a scale of Good, Acceptable, Marginal or Poor.
The insurance institute rates head-restraint designs as good, acceptable, marginal or poor based on how the restraint meets two criteria for an average-size male, whom it defines as 5-foot-10 and 170 pounds: * Restraints rated marginal must be high enough to protect an average-size man from whiplash injury; those rated poor are not high enough.
According to a study released last month by the institute, unemployment rates increased for both immigrants and nonimmigrant New Yorkers from early 2008 to early 2010, but the rate for immigrants remained two percentage points lower than that of nonimmigrants.
When Washington State instituted experience rating in response to federal incentives in 1985, employers became less likely to lay off workers than were their counterparts in Oregon and Idaho, according to a study just published in The Journal of Public Economics by Patricia Anderson of Dartmouth and Bruce D. Meyer of Northwestern.
New Jersey instituted community rating and guaranteed issue way back in 1992.
"Marginal" is one step better than the institute's worst rating of "poor".
"Good" is the institute's top rating.
