Rear-seat passengers don’t fare so well in IIHS midsize pickup tests

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Five midsize crew-cab pickup trucks have failed to earn the top “Good” rating in new crash tests conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), a U.S.-based non-profit organization. The five trucks failed to properly protect occupants in the rear seats in a frontal collision.

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The IIHS recently updated its moderate overlap front crash test, which now includes a dummy — representing a small woman or a 12-year-old child — in the rear seat behind the driver’s seat, which contains a dummy the size of an average adult male. The crash is done as an overlap, since few frontal crashes are directly head-on but mostly the result of a driver partly leaving a lane into oncoming traffic.

All the trucks did well at protecting their front occupants, but their rear-occupant ratings brought down their overall scores. The top overall rating is “Good.” The Nissan Frontier came closest with the next-lowest “Acceptable.” The Ford Ranger rated “Marginal,” one below that, while the Chevrolet Colorado, Jeep Gladiator, and Toyota Tacoma all rated the lowest “Poor” score. All were 2022-2023 models, which were unchanged between those model years, except for the Colorado, which was only rated as a 2022 since it is an all-new model for 2023.

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The moderate front overlap test was updated last year, after research indicated that, in newer vehicles, belted occupants in the rear seats have a higher risk of fatal injury than those in front. IIHS said it isn’t because the rear seat has now become less safe, but that the front seats are safer due to improved airbags and advanced seatbelts “that are rarely available in back.” Even so, IIHS said that the rear seat is still safest for children because of the risk of injury from an inflating front airbag.

In addition to the rear dummy, researchers also developed new metrics for the injuries most commonly seen in rear-seat passengers.

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To earn a “Good” rating, the second-row dummy cannot record an excessive injury risk to the head, neck, chest, or thigh. The dummy can’t slide below the lap belt, known as “submarining,” and the head must remain a safe distance from the back of the front seat and the rest of the vehicle’s interior. The dummy also records if the shoulder belt is too high, which can reduce the restraint system’s effectiveness.

All five trucks provided “Good” protection overall for the driver, although the Gladiator and Tacoma rated “Acceptable” — a slightly higher risk of injury — to the driver’s leg or foot.

In the Colorado, Frontier, Ranger, and Tacoma, the rear dummy’s head came too close to the front seat. The dummy submarined under the lap belt in the Ranger, which also recorded a moderate risk of chest injuries. The Colorado, Gladiator, and Tacoma indicated a moderate or likely risk of both neck and chest injuries to the rear occupant.

“Our updated moderate overlap front crash test proved to be challenging for small pickups,” said David Harkey, president of IIHS. “A common problem was that the rear passenger dummy’s head came dangerously close to the front seatback; and in many cases, dummy measurements indicated a risk of neck or chest injuries. All these things tell us that the rear seat belts need improvement.”