IIHS rated three of four heavy-duty pickups Poor at avoiding a car ahead

Three of the four heavy-duty pickups the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety tested earned a Poor rating for avoiding a collision with a car ahead. The Chevrolet Silverado 3500HD, the Ford F-350 and the GMC Sierra 3500 all landed at the bottom of the scale in vehicle-to-vehicle front crash prevention, and the fourth truck, the Ram 3500, managed only Marginal. IIHS released the Class 3 pickup results on Oct. 8, 2026, alongside its cargo van ratings.

IIHS President David Harkey said the results were “a wake-up call for commercial vehicle makers,” and noted that front crash prevention is “especially important for these larger, heavier vans and trucks.”

Silverado, F-350 and Sierra: Poor against a car ahead

Class 3 pickups carry a gross vehicle weight rating of 10,001 to 14,000 pounds, which puts them well above the half-ton trucks most shoppers know. In the IIHS ratings table, the 2025-26 Chevrolet Silverado 3500HD, the 2025 Ford F-350 and the 2025-26 GMC Sierra 3500 are each listed as Poor for vehicle-to-vehicle prevention. The 2025-27 Ram 3500 is the lone exception at Marginal, still short of the Acceptable or Good marks the institute hands to better systems.

The vehicle-to-vehicle evaluation looks at forward collision warning and automatic emergency braking at different speeds, using a passenger car target. IIHS reports that some systems were marked down for warnings that came too late, even when the truck slowed enough to avoid or soften a crash. A Poor rating can therefore mean a system that reacts, but not early enough to matter.

Pedestrian results were kinder, the motorcycle target was not

The same pickups did better when the target was a person. The Ford F-350 and the Ram 3500 earned Acceptable in pedestrian prevention, while the Silverado 3500HD and the Sierra 3500 each earned Marginal. Nobody in this group reached Good, and none of the four was Poor. The pedestrian protocol covers daytime and nighttime crossings by an adult or child, and an adult walking in the travel lane, with nighttime runs repeated on low and high beams.

The hardest challenge across the vans and pickups was the motorcycle target. IIHS said it was the toughest scenario, and several systems gave no warning and did not slow in most motorcycle trials. The article does not break out motorcycle ratings model by model, so the car-ahead results are the ones that can be compared truck to truck. The motorcycle finding still points to a gap in how current sensors classify a narrow, low-profile vehicle in the lane ahead.

Several vehicles also detected the child dummy from a distance and then lost it as they approached. IIHS suggested the child’s shorter height and the tall front ends of these vehicles may play a part, since the cameras and sensors are mounted near the rearview mirror. Tall hoods and high mounting points are features of the work trucks in this class, not a fixable quirk of one model.

The pickups are not an outlier next to the vans. In the same release, four of the seven cargo vans were Poor for vehicle-to-vehicle prevention: the Chevrolet Express 2500, the GMC Savana 2500, the Ford Transit T250 and the Ram ProMaster 2500. The Mercedes-Benz Sprinter 2500 was Good, which shows how wide the gap is between the best and worst commercial systems. Among the pickups the best result was the Ram 3500’s Marginal, so no heavy-duty truck matched the van leaders, and the Silverado 3500HD, F-350 and Sierra 3500 sat with the weakest vans.

What buyers and fleets can do with the ratings

The institute ran these trucks through the same vehicle-to-vehicle and pedestrian protocols and rating requirements used for passenger vehicles, so a fleet manager can compare a Ram 3500 against a family crossover on the same scale. IIHS also noted that every test it ran had at least one good performer, which means the technology exists in this size class.

Context for the stakes comes from the institute’s own tally: 6,215 people died in 2024 in crashes involving heavy- or medium-duty vehicles or light vans, about 16 percent of U.S. roadway deaths. That count spans more vehicle types than Class 3 pickups, so it frames the problem and does not measure these four trucks. The institute says it will add headlight and rear automatic braking ratings for Class 3 vehicles this year and next and will phase in Class 4 through 6 trucks later, with more information at its commercial vehicles hub.

Truck makers now face a public scorecard. Each of the four pickups in this round is on sale in model-year 2025 or later form, and the next move belongs to the manufacturers: updates to the braking software and sensors could change the ratings when IIHS retests, as it routinely does for passenger vehicles. The institute’s June launch of commercial vehicle evaluations suggests this will not be the last set of grades.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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