2017 Ford Super Duty Gets Five Stars From The NHTSA

Trucks are built tough, and tough is safe... right? In theory, maybe, but not always in practice. In fact, only one heavy-duty pickup has earned the highest safety rating from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

That truck is the new Ford Super Duty – specifically the F-250 Crew Cab 4x2 – which has now earned a five-star rating under the NHTSA's New Car Assessment Program (NCAP). Though separate from the lighter-duty F-150, the new Super Duty adopts a aluminum bodywork laid over a high-strength steel frame.

With top marks in the frontal driver crash tests, and the same five-star side-crash ratings as the previous model, Dearborn's newest heavy-duty truck earned an overall safety rating of five stars, making it the first heavy-duty pickup to do so.

The news follows shortly after the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety revealed less-than-satisfactory ratings for the Nissan Titan – although that was for a lighter-duty truck, evaluated by a different organization using different standards.

Nissan's Titan and Frontier are both due to be evaluated for potential five-star ratings from the NHTSA, as is the new Honda Ridgeline – the only pickup to score top marks from the IIHS so far this year.