Why pickups trail SUVs and sedans on Safety
Trucks post a Safety median well below the cars they share a showroom with. Which of the eleven criteria account for the gap, how the current-generation half-tons closed part of it, and what a truck buyer should check.
Pickups post a Safety median well below the cars they share a showroom with. Trucks median 62.9 points (C) on the subject, against 75.2 (B) for SUVs and 75.1 (B) for sedans. Because Safety carries 20% of the overall GPA, that gap alone accounts for a good part of why trucks grade lower overall than SUVs built on the same platforms. This guide takes the subject apart criterion by criterion to find where the gap actually is — because it is not where the size of the vehicles suggests.
Criterion by criterion
| Criterion | Weight | SUVs | Trucks | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NHTSA overall rating 3.1.1 | ×3 | 100 | 50 | −50 |
| IIHS awards & crashworthiness 3.1.2 | ×3 | 68 | 50 | −18 |
| Headlight performance 3.3.1 | ×1 | 72 | 58 | −14 |
| Outward visibility 3.3.2 | ×1 | 72 | 60 | −12 |
| Standard ADAS suite breadth 3.2.1 | ×3 | 85 | 74.5 | −10.5 |
| Lane keeping & centering 3.2.4 | ×1 | 74 | 65 | −9 |
| Adaptive cruise & highway assist 3.2.5 | ×2 | 78 | 69 | −9 |
| Blind-spot & cross-traffic coverage 3.2.3 | ×1 | 80 | 73 | −7 |
| Automatic emergency braking performance 3.2.2 | ×2 | 73.5 | 67 | −6.5 |
| Child-seat (LATCH) usability 3.3.3 | ×1 | 74.5 | 70 | −4.5 |
| Hands-free driving availability 3.2.6 | ×1 | 15 | 67 | +52 |
Three patterns in that table.
The crash-test anchors
The NHTSA overall rating and the IIHS crashworthiness criteria are weighted ×3 each, and both programs test fewer truck configurations than car ones — a pickup line has cab, bed and drivetrain combinations that a sedan does not, and a rating that covers one crew-cab configuration is scored conservatively for a volume trim it does not exactly describe. IIHS in particular has been slower to award its top designations to large pickups, and the newer moderate-overlap test with a rear passenger has been unkind to them. A missing or partial result is not scored as a zero, but it is not scored as a five-star result either.
The driver-assistance suite
This is the larger half of the gap. The framework’s heaviest assistance criterion is the breadth of the standard suite, and truck lineups have trailed SUVs in making automatic emergency braking, blind-spot monitoring, lane keeping and adaptive cruise standard rather than optional on the work trims that anchor the range — the volume trim a scorecard describes is often the one where the suite is a package. A system on the order sheet protects nobody who did not tick the box, and the criterion is written to say so. Hands-free highway driving, where it exists on trucks, is confined to the top of the range.
Everyday safety
Headlight performance and outward visibility are the criteria where a tall vehicle with a high hood pays for its shape, and where the IIHS headlight ratings have been hard on trucks. Child-seat usability, by contrast, is one of the places trucks do well — a crew cab’s flat rear bench is an easy install — and it narrows the gap slightly rather than widening it.
The current generations closed part of it
The gap is a moving target. Every half-ton on the site was redesigned or refreshed inside the ten-year window, and in each case Safety was the subject that moved most — the new platform brought the assistance suite the old one could not fit, and in the model year it became standard the subject grade jumped. Ten years of the Chevrolet Silverado 1500, graded shows one nameplate’s version of that in detail; in the fleet-wide list of biggest single-year moves in Model years, generations and carry-over: how history is graded, trucks are well represented for exactly this reason.
| Segment | Models | Median (pts) | Median GPA |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full-Size Truck | 13 | 64.3 | 2.35C+ |
| Mid-Size Truck | 7 | 60.9 | 2.11C |
| Compact Truck | 2 | 59.9 | 2.04C |
| Vehicle | Segment | Safety |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 Rivian R1T | Full-Size Truck | 3.29B+ |
| 2026 Honda Ridgeline | Mid-Size Truck | 3.28B+ |
| 2026 Ford F-150 | Full-Size Truck | 2.85B- |
| 2026 GMC Hummer EV | Full-Size Truck | 2.73B- |
| 2026 Chevrolet Silverado EV | Full-Size Truck | 2.70B- |
What a truck buyer should check
Two criteria, on the car page, before anything else. The standard ADAS suite breadth reasoning says what is standard on the volume trim and what is a package — if you are buying a higher trim, the suite may be complete and the grade conservative for you; if you are buying a work trim, it may be absent entirely. And the IIHS awards and crashworthiness reasoning says which configuration was tested; if it is not the cab you are buying, the result is a proxy. The subject grade is an honest summary of the volume trim. The criteria are where your trim lives.