Electric vehicles (EVs) get a bad rap regarding safety. The reason? Scary terms like “thermal runaway” and curb weights heavy enough to punch through guardrails make people uneasy. However, the latest Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) picks for the safest trucks name just one large pickup as an IIHS Top Safety Pick+ (TSP+) award winner: the fully-electric Rivian R1T. Tragically, the standings also reveal that no gas-powered American trucks took home a Top Safety Pick or TSP+ rating for 2024. 

Not one of the popular American trucks on the market for 2024 took home an IIHS Top Safety Pick or TSP+ rating

I don’t have to tell you that Americans love their pickup trucks. Hell, the Ford F-Series has been the best-selling truck in the country for the better part of 50 years. Incidentally, the F-Series has outsold every other nameplate of any vehicle type in America for 42 years. It’s a seemingly unshakable dominance.

However, the popularity of the Ford F-150, Chevrolet Silverado 1500, and RAM 1500 doesn’t mean they aren’t without fault. Specifically, not one of these ubiquitous American trucks took home a safety award from the IIHS.

In fact, the only American pickup truck to earn an IIHS Top Safety Pick or TSP+ for 2024 is the all-electric Rivian R1T. The R1T earned “good” ratings in every crashworthiness subcategory, That, and the electric pickup truck received nothing below an “acceptable” rating in crash avoidance and mitigation evaluations.

Unfortunately, the most popular pickup trucks in America didn’t fare as well in testing. According to the IIHS, the Ford F-150 has many of the same safety test follies as the RAM 1500 and Chevrolet Silverado 1500. Most notably, all three popular pickups earned “moderate” ratings for the Lower Anchors and Tethers for Children (LATCH) testing. Moreover, all three trucks received “poor” ratings in the moderate overlap front crashworthiness tests.

Conversely, the Toyota Tundra is the only large pickup truck to earn a Top Safety Pick. Incidentally, a “poor” rating in the updated moderate overlap front crashworthiness testing kept the Tundra from a glowing report card.