Some Models Excel And While Others Falter - Why Are The New F150 Crash Scores So Varied?

As always, let the buyer beware :-(

Do your due diligence, rather than assuming. The great news is that this crash data is publicly available, so if it's important to you, it's fairly easy to find out how the vehicle you're scoping out is crash rated.

On a similar note, rather than just going by someone's rating, you might elect to dig into the specifics of the crash tests. For example, some North American manufacturers test passenger restraint systems by using an accelerating sled. That's right -- imagine the test dummies facing you in seats and seatbelts with a dashboard in front of them; the sled is then quickly accelerated away from you -- backwards relative to the test dummies -- to simulate the Gs they'll be subjected to in a crash. That seems backwards, doesn't it (no pun intended)? Shouldn't the test dummies be traveling *forward*, as they would while driving, then quickly and suddenly *decelerate* to a stop, as they would in a front-end collision? That way, the test dummies would also be subjected to all that real-world, post-impact momentum that also causes injuries. Yeah, I thought so, too, and yet this type of test is perfectly "legal" for obtaining passenger injury and survivability ratings.

Again, let the buyer beware. Caveat Emptor.

The prattling idiots of the IIHS strike again. Their sole function is to provide unscientific data to insurance companies to justify insurance rates and increases.

Inveterate assclown.