Heavy-duty pickups and cargo vans largely failed new IIHS crash-avoidance tests, a shortfall that matters when crashes involving those vehicles already kill thousands of Americans each year.
Carscoops reported that the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety put 11 commercial vehicles through vehicle-to-vehicle and pedestrian crash-prevention evaluations, covering four Class 3 pickups and seven cargo vans.
None of the pickups earned a good or acceptable rating for stopping crashes with other vehicles. That result lands hard on roads already shared by families, commuters, and the work fleet.
Class 3 pickups sit in a weight band of 10,001 to 14,000 pounds. They are larger and heavier than ordinary passenger trucks, which raises the stakes when the automatic systems meant to warn and brake fall short.
Three of the four pickups drew the lowest possible vehicle-to-vehicle mark: the Chevrolet Silverado 3500HD, the GMC Sierra 3500, and the Ford F-350. The Ram 3500 scored only marginal.
Motorcycles proved especially hard for the systems. Most of the trucks failed to warn or slow in time. Some cut speed, but none issued an early enough warning to meet the institute’s standard.
Pedestrian results were mixed and still uneven. The F-350 and Ram 3500 reached acceptable marks. The Silverado 3500HD and Sierra 3500 landed at marginal.
Some systems struggled more with a child-sized pedestrian in daylight than with an adult at night. In other runs, the tech spotted a child-sized figure, then lost track as the vehicle closed in.
IIHS said the pattern may tie to tall front ends and cameras mounted near the rearview mirror. Height and sensor placement are design choices. When those choices blunt crash-prevention gear, ordinary drivers pay the price in risk.
Among the cargo vans, the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter 2500 was the only vehicle to earn a good rating for vehicle-to-vehicle crash prevention. The Chevrolet BrightDrop 400 and the Rivian RCV-Delivery 500 posted good marks for pedestrian crash prevention.
At the other end, the Chevrolet Express 2500 and the GMC Savana 2500 scored poor in both test sets. Neither offers automatic emergency braking. Forward collision warning is optional on each.
That gap is not a minor trim-line detail. Automatic braking and clear forward warnings are basic tools on many passenger vehicles. Leaving them off, or optional, on high-mileage work vans puts more of the burden on human reaction alone.
IIHS pointed to a 2024 toll: crashes involving heavy- or medium-duty vehicles and light vans killed 6,215 people. That was 16 percent of all U.S. traffic fatalities that year.
Those are not abstract lab scores. They are deaths on public roads, in collisions that often involve lighter passenger cars, motorcycles, and people on foot. Heavier commercial iron that cannot reliably detect and slow for smaller road users multiplies the harm when something goes wrong.
IIHS President David Harkey did not soften the message.
"These results are a wake-up call for commercial vehicle makers,"
Harkey said. The line fits the data. Good ratings were rare. Poor and marginal results were common where it counted most, vehicle-to-vehicle prevention on the big pickups, and full-spectrum failure on two widely used cargo vans.
Plenty of commercial vehicles are not held to the same safety requirements that cover passenger cars, including certain airbag rules. The testing package underlines a wider unevenness: advanced crash-avoidance expectations that shoppers now treat as normal on family vehicles have not fully carried over to the work side of the lot.
Manufacturers build what the market and the rulebook demand. When the rulebook is softer, and when flagship work trucks still post poor or marginal crash-prevention scores, the public bears more residual risk. Taxpayers and private drivers share the same asphalt with these machines every day.
Better sensors, better camera placement, standard automatic emergency braking, and honest early warnings are not exotic ideas. They are practical steps already proven in lighter vehicles. The institute’s results show how far some commercial nameplates still have to go.
Fleet buyers, insurers, and regulators will read the same scorecard. So should anyone who shares a lane with a loaded Class 3 pickup or a windowless cargo van. Performance that trails the passenger car standard is not a niche lab story when thousands of people die each year in crashes involving this class of vehicle.
Heavy trucks and vans do hard work. They also owe the public crash-avoidance systems that actually work when a car, a motorcycle, or a child is in the path.