Following its refresh for the 2024 model year, the Ford F-150 earned a Top Safety Pick Award from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), which was good news for shoppers after the 2023 model fell short of achieving the same thing when it struggled in the organization’s updated side impact test. However, things were much worse in the recent past, as even the more modern 2001 Ford F-150 performed quite poorly in crash testing when it was new – a problem that IIHS revisited in a recent video containing some of its test footage.
In the mid ’90s, IIHS came up with a new 40 mph moderate overlap crash test that more closely replicated the types of real-world crashes that result in injuries and fatalities – one that was more stringent than the government’s full-width barrier crash test at the time. As one might imagine, a number of vehicles struggled with this new test, and that included the 2001 Ford F-150 SuperCab, as we can see here. The F-150 suffered from several severe structural issues, which wound up leaving little survival space for the driver dummy and passenger.
The IIHS gave the 2001 Ford F-150 a rating of “poor” in this new test, citing some serious issues discovered afterward. “Dummy movement wasn’t well controlled,” it said at the time. “The airbag deployed too late, and there was too much rearward and far too much upward steering wheel movement, which contributed to the dummy’s head bottoming out the airbag and hitting the steering wheel. The driver seat was tilted so far forward that the dummy’s head was confined to a narrow space between the steering wheel and head restraint during much of the crash.”
Though this was one of the worst results IIHS has ever seen in such testing, Ford responded quickly, updating the F-150 to perform far better in this dangerous type of crash. In fact, when the 2004 model year rolled around, that same pickup managed to ace the test, highlighting why crash testing is so important in the first place.
Comment
That particular test should have been performed before the vehicle was ever sold All manufacturers should do this before they sell them.