No large pickup but the Cybertruck earned IIHS’s Top Safety Pick+ for 2026

The Tesla Cybertruck crew cab is the only large pickup to earn a Top Safety Pick+ award from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety for 2026, and the listing covers model years 2026-27. Just one other large pickup made the awards list at all, the Toyota Tundra crew cab, which landed on the lower Top Safety Pick tier. As of October 2026, those two trucks are the entire large-pickup roster.

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Two Tiers, One Pedestrian Requirement

The institute, known as IIHS, builds both awards on the same crash-test foundation: good ratings in the small overlap front, moderate overlap front and side tests, plus acceptable or good headlights available as standard equipment. The difference sits in crash prevention. The higher award demands a good rating for pedestrian front crash prevention and an acceptable or good rating for vehicle-to-vehicle front crash prevention 2.0, both as standard equipment, while the lower award asks only for an acceptable or good pedestrian rating and has no vehicle-to-vehicle requirement.

That distinction decides which of the two trucks gets the plus sign. A pickup can protect occupants well in a crash and still miss the top tier if its automatic braking is merely adequate around people on foot or lacks the newer vehicle-to-vehicle test. The full list of winners and the written award criteria are posted on the IIHS page for the 2026 class.

What the Cybertruck Scored

The IIHS rating page for the Cybertruck crew cab shows Good in every category that counts toward the award. Small overlap front is Good on both the driver and passenger sides, moderate overlap front and side are Good on the updated tests, and the LED projector headlights are Good on all trims. Front crash prevention is Good for pedestrians and Good for vehicle-to-vehicle 2.0, with Collision Avoidance Assist listed as standard. Those last two results are what lift the truck above the Tundra.

The headlight entry gives more detail than the single letter suggests: both low and high beams are LED projector units, high-beam assist is listed as present, and the Good rating covers all trims. Because both award tiers require acceptable or good headlights and crash prevention systems to be available as standard equipment, wording such as all trims and standard Collision Avoidance Assist matters here. It means the rating describes what every Cybertruck buyer receives rather than an option package that some trucks lack.

The small overlap result carries fine print. The IIHS page says that rating applies to 2025-27 models built after April 2025, and Equipment World reports that the passenger-side small overlap rating rests on a test of a 2025 Cybertruck that Tesla conducted itself rather than one run by the institute. The pedestrian rating applies to all 2025-27 models, and the vehicle-to-vehicle rating applies to all 2026-27 models.

The same Equipment World summary lists two weaker marks that do not affect the award: seat belt reminders are rated Marginal and the ease of using child-seat LATCH anchors is rated Acceptable. Neither is a pass-or-fail item for Top Safety Pick status, so the Cybertruck can carry the plus designation while still leaving room for improvement in those two areas.

Where the Toyota Tundra Falls Short of the Plus

The Tundra listing on the IIHS awards page is for the 2026 Toyota Tundra crew cab pickup, and it is the only large pickup besides the Cybertruck to appear under that heading. Qualifying for Top Safety Pick at all means the truck passed all three crash tests with Good ratings and offers acceptable or better pedestrian braking as standard equipment, which is a real threshold given that only two large pickups cleared the 2026 criteria.

The IIHS page for the 2026 Tundra crew cab confirms the lower tier. Equipment World summarizes the truck’s results as Good in the small overlap, moderate overlap and side tests, with headlights rated Good to Average depending on trim or option and pedestrian front crash prevention rated Acceptable. An Acceptable pedestrian result satisfies the Top Safety Pick requirement but falls short of the good rating the higher award requires, which is consistent with the Tundra stopping one tier below the Cybertruck. Seat belt reminders are Good and LATCH ease of use is Acceptable on the Tundra.

Set side by side, the two trucks show how the same crash-test foundation can yield different tiers. Both earned Good ratings in the small overlap, moderate overlap and side tests. The Tundra’s seat belt reminders are rated Good against the Cybertruck’s Marginal, a reminder that neither truck leads in every category, but only the Cybertruck cleared the pedestrian bar that separates the two awards.

Reading the Award Before Shopping for a Large Pickup

Equipment World notes that several of the best-selling pickups did not make the list and that only two large pickups qualified, so the awards do not give a buyer a long menu to compare. The institute’s own awards page, the 2026 Top Safety Picks list, covers every vehicle class and is the place to confirm whether a specific trim and build date fall inside a rating.

The build-date caveats matter in practice. The Cybertruck results apply to defined model-year ranges and, for small overlap, to trucks built after April 2025, so a buyer shopping used or checking an older inventory unit should compare the production date with the rating page instead of assuming the badge carries over. The same logic applies to the Tundra, whose listing is for the 2026 crew cab.

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

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