The Most Popular Pickup Truck Has Killed the Most Drivers But Earns Top Safety Pick
The Ford F-150 is one of the most iconic vehicles ever to exist. While pickup trucks have only grown in popularity since the dawn of the car, the Ford F-150 has followed suit since its debut in 1975. The F-150 is the most popular pickup truck in America. In fact, Ford F-Series sales will surpass 640,000 trucks for 2022, making it America’s best-selling truck for 46 consecutive years and America’s best-selling vehicle for 41 years after selling an average of at least one F-Series Truck every 49 seconds last year. So, how can it be so popular and also the most dangerous pickup truck on the road?
Is the Ford F-150 safe?
Figuring out whether or not a particular car or truck is safe is pretty tricky. There are a ton of factors that go into rating a car’s crash test scores. But in many cases, the popularity of a model can skew the scales when looking at the raw data of how many people die in a certain model in the event of a crash.
For instance, ValuePengiun listed the 20 most dangerous cars in America, and if you notice the list’s contents, many of these models are the most popular car in their respective categories. The No. one most dangerous car on the list also happens to be the most popular pickup truck and one of the most popular vehicles, period; the Ford F-150. The data pulled from the IIHS, and the NHTSA shows that in 2018, Ford F-series trucks were involved in 10,845 fatal crashes, where someone in an F-series died.
The data also shows that in 2018, Ford sold nearly 1 million (909,330) units between the F-150, F-250, and F-350. The next closest was the Chevy Silverado which sold 585,581 units and had 7,718 road fatalities. While the F-Series had nearly 3,000 more road deaths that year, it sold over 400,000 more units, meaning it had at minimum 400,000 more chances of getting into fatal crashes.
What is the 2018 Ford F-150 crash rating?
Despite being named the most dangerous vehicle due to its number of road deaths, the 2018 Ford F-150 got Top Safety Pick from the IIHS. This is a perfect example of how gathering and understanding safety ratings and real-world safety data can be pretty confusing. The Ford F-150, by all measures, seems to be fairly safe. However, given the amount of them on the road, the law of probability eventually tips the scales.
How much does it cost to insure a Ford F-150?
More people die in the Ford F-150 than in any other car. However, that doesn’t mean the F-150 is expensive to insure. In fact, According to ValuePenguin, the Ford F-150 is the fourth-cheapest vehicle to insure. On average, F-150s cost $2,471 a year for coverage.
This smoking gun proves that the F-150 isn’t necessarily a dangerous truck. If insurance companies believed you were more likely to have an accident in an F-150 than in other cars, they would surely charge more for coverage. The fact that it’s this cheap to insure shows that the data supports the Ford being safe.
This data is confusing. Many factors play into what makes a car dangerous, and even when the data shows that the Ford F-150 is the most dangerous pickup truck, that doesn’t exactly mean what it sounds like.
