For the past 37 years, the Ford F-150 has been America’s best-selling vehicle. People love it for its reliability, versatility, and its power. It works great as an everyday vehicle as well as a work truck and can handle most jobs extremely well. But with how popular the F-150 is, do its safety ratings check out? Especially if you’re using it as an everyday vehicle, you need your truck to be rated highly in safety. Let’s take a look at how well the F-150 has done in its safety ratings.

The NHTSA’s crash test ratings

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration assigns vehicles a safety rating based on the potential for crashes resulting in injuries or fatalities. They put the F-150 Super Crew through three of their standard crash tests and gave it a ranking for each. The first, the frontal barrier test, simulates a head-on collision between the truck and a similar vehicle, each one moving at 35 mph. The F-150 Super Crew received a five-star rating.

The side crash rating combines the results of two tests: the side barrier test and the side pole barrier test. The side barrier test simulates a vehicle collision occurring in an intersection between a standing vehicle and a moving barrier traveling at 38.5 mph. The side pole barrier test simulates a scenario where the truck would hit something stationary like a tree or pole. These two results are combined, and the F-150 Super Crew scored another five-star rating.

The third and final crash test is the rollover category. The rollover test determines the likelihood of a rollover for a vehicle involved in a single-car loss-of-control scenario. For the F-150 Super Crew, they determined it would be 19.1% likely for the F-150 Super Crew to rollover in their simulation, and the truck scored a four-star rating. Overall, however, they gave the truck five stars.

The F-150’s IIHS Rating

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety is another well-known safety standard organization, and they also tested out the Ford F-150 crew cab. It performed well in all of their categories, except for the headlight test. They determined that the F-150’s headlights don’t provide adequate light on both a straightaway road and a curved road. They found turning on the high-beams compensated a bit for the low-beams but found them to still be inadequate on both sides of the road.

The only other category it didn’t score top points on was the ease of use for its child seat anchors. The F-150 scored a “marginal” rating in this category after the testers found the location of the anchors and hardware difficult to locate in the back seat.

What safety features does the F-150 have?

It’s important to know what safety features are considered standard for trucks. One notable safety feature that the 2019 F-150 comes with is forward collision warning. This system notifies the driver of an impending collision before it happens, giving you an extra few seconds to react. It also comes with crash imminent braking, which allows the truck to apply the brakes in the event it senses the car in front of you may have slammed on their brakes.

Another important safety feature that the F-150 has is its lane departure warning. When you’re on a long trip, it can be easy to get distracted, but the lane departure warning beeps when you veer out of your lane, reminding you to straighten up and get back in the right lane. This is an optional feature, but we think it’s worth it to add on.