Surprisingly Safe: 1992-1996 Aeronose/OBS Ford F-Series Trucks

It wasn’t just Chevy making shockingly-safe full size trucks in the mid-1990s. Although Ford’s improvement in full-size truck safety through the 1980s and early ’90s was more gradual, by the F-150’s 9th generation introduced in 1992, it had evolved into a truck that was very capable of protecting occupants in frontal crashes. NHTSA’s test of a ’92 F-150 showed it to have serious injury risks of 21% for the driver and 9% for the passenger, good enough for 3 stars (and very nearly a 4th) for the driver and the full 5 stars for the front passenger. This compares quite favorably with the average of 27% and 20% for driver and passenger respectively on 1992-model tested vehicles. The ’94 F-150, newly equipped with a standard driver air bag, did even better. Its serious injury risks of 8% for the driver and 5% for the passenger were both well inside the 5 star range. The average injury risk between the occupants was 6.5%, the best of any 1994-model vehicle (33 were tested that year). Average 1994-model injury risks were 17% and 22% for driver and passenger respectively. 

Keep in mind that this F-150 did this well even without a passenger air bag, an added benefit given that passenger air bags from before 1998 were often overaggressive and could cause serious or even fatal injuries to children and frail adults. 

Of course, even a 1994-1996 F-150 isn’t going to be as safe as today’s pickup trucks. Things like offset crashes and side pole crashes weren’t yet considered at that time. But for a vehicle of any type from the mid-1990s it does remarkably well.