2024 Tacoma crash/safety ratings (a new one is out)

Here’s a summary so you don’t have to look it up yourself.

So there are 2 groups that do the tests for these ratings. First, the IIHS (Insurance institute for Highway Safety) rating was out last year and the 2024 Taco overall rating was “Top Safety Pick.” Here’s a link to the small pickup category for IIHS: https://www.iihs.org/ratings/class-summary/small-pickups (note, IIHS has a higher-rated category called “top safety pick-plus” but no small pickups made it into that category) and to the 2024 Tacoma-specific results: https://www.iihs.org/ratings/vehicle/toyota/tacoma-extended-cab-pickup/2024

A second rating, from the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, part of US DoT), came out very recently. They do different tests and configurations from the IIHS tests. Their website doesn’t have direct links so you have to go here and search for 2024 Toyota Tacoma: https://www.nhtsa.gov/ratings

NHTSA has 4 top-level tests/results:

1. Overall rating; 2. Frontal crash rating; 3. Side impact crash rating; 4. Rollover rating.

Within categories 2 and 3 they break out some separate test results. In category 2 frontal, they rate the driver and passenger separately, then combine to an overall rating. In category 3 side impact, they do 2 tests: side barrier and side pole, and further break each one into front and rear passengers.

They did not (yet?) do the rollover test for the 2024 Tacoma and therefore there is no overall rating either.

NHTSA results for 2024 Tacoma (out of 5 stars):

Frontal crash, driver: 3/5 stars

Frontal crash, passenger: 4/5 stars

Side impact crash: 5/5 stars for both front and rear passengers, for both the side barrier crash and the side pole crash.

Note they tested a 2WD SR5, a 4WD SR5, and a hybrid (all had the same results).


For comparison, the Gen-3 2023 Tacoma had these results:

4 stars overall; 4 stars frontal (both driver and passenger); 5 stars for side barrier (both front and rear passenger) and 4 stars for side pole. The combined rating for side impact was 5 stars. For the rollover test, the 2023 Tacoma got 4 stars and a 19.1% rollover risk rating.


You can download detailed test reports from the NHTSA site for each individual test. I haven’t done that, but I do wonder why Toyota’s fancy new TNGA-F platform scored worse for the driver on a frontal crash than a Gen-3. I’d also be curious why the passenger was rated a safer place to be in a frontal crash than the driver. It might be explained in the longer report.

Another curiosity is in IIHS’s tests, they have frontal crash tests as well, and the 2024 Tacoma scored a “good” for both the small and moderate overlap test, but note that their frontal tests are offset/angled frontal crashes, whereas NHTSA’s frontal test is head-on at 35 mph.

Anyway, some of you might care so I thought I'd post a summary.