Trucks are built tough, and tough is safe… right? In theory, maybe, but not always in practice. In fact, only one heavy-duty pickup has earned the highest safety rating from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
That truck is the new Ford Super Duty – specifically the F-250 Crew Cab 4×2 – which has now earned a five-star rating under the NHTSA’s New Car Assessment Program (NCAP). Though separate from the lighter-duty F-150, the new Super Duty adopts a aluminum bodywork laid over a high-strength steel frame.
With top marks in the frontal driver crash tests, and the same five-star side-crash ratings as the previous model, Dearborn’s newest heavy-duty truck earned an overall safety rating of five stars, making it the first heavy-duty pickup to do so.
The news follows shortly after the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety revealed less-than-satisfactory ratings for the Nissan Titan – although that was for a lighter-duty truck, evaluated by a different organization using different standards.
Nissan’s Titan and Frontier are both due to be evaluated for potential five-star ratings from the NHTSA, as is the new Honda Ridgeline – the only pickup to score top marks from the IIHS so far this year.
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