Why We Need Roof-Crush Ratings for Heavy-Duty Pickup Trucks

Pickup makers are using the structures designed for half-ton cabs in much heavier HD pickups. Isn’t it time we had a measure of how safe they are in a rollover?

Sep 26, 2016

The IIHS measures the exact amount of deflection a roof will absorb with a constant and even amount of force from a flat metal plate applied by this monstrous machine. But they don't test heavy-duty pickup trucks.

Ford and GM use essentially the same cab structures for their light-duty and heavy-duty pickup trucks. The implication is that pickup cabs of current Ford, Chevrolet and GMC half-ton pickups should also protect the occupants of their HD counterparts. But do they?

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety measures the amount of deflection a half-ton pickup’s roof will absorb under a constant and even amount of force. Based on the amount of intrusion into the cabin, IIHS rates vehicles good, acceptable, marginal or poor.

IIHS ratings of the crew-cab half-ton pickups:

2016 Ford F-150 SuperCrew: good (strength-to-weight ratio: 5.85)
2016 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 crew cab: good (strength-to-weight ratio: 4.10)
2016 Ram 1500 crew cab: marginal (strength-to-weight ratio: 2.97)
2016 Toyota Tundra CrewMax: acceptable (strength-to-weight ratio: 3.94)

But neither IIHS nor NHTSA crush test heavy duty pickups. And the HD models are much heavier. In the case of a rollover, the roof seems more likely to collapse on passengers than in the lighter half-tons.

PickupTrucks.com says it likes the direction truck makers are taking by building safer cabs for half-ton pickups, but asks if they shouldn't they also be making even stronger structures for their HD counterparts?

(more on pickup-cab safety testing . . . )