2020 Toyota Tacoma crew cab earns safety award

The 2020 Toyota Tacoma crew cab, a small pickup, earns a Top Safety Pick award from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety when equipped with specific headlights.

The Tacoma crew cab, which Toyota calls the Double Cab, earns the award when equipped with good-rated LED reflector headlights, which are a new option for the 2020 model year. Its base headlights, which are halogens, earn only a marginal rating due to deficiencies in visibility.

To qualify for a 2019 Top Safety Pick award, a vehicle needs a good or acceptable headlight rating, and must also earn good ratings in the driver-side small overlap front, moderate overlap front, side, roof strength and head restraint tests, as well as a good or acceptable rating in the passenger-side small overlap front test. It also needs an advanced or superior rating for vehicle-to-vehicle front crash prevention.

The Tacoma crew cab earns good ratings in five crashworthiness evaluations and an acceptable rating in the passenger-side small overlap crash test. In that test, structural intrusion into the vehicle's footwell contributed to elevated injury risk to the right lower leg and foot. Combined with its other ratings, a good rating in the passenger-side test would have given the pickup a Top Safety Pick+ award.

The Tacoma crew cab earns a superior rating for its standard vehicle-to-vehicle front crash prevention system, which avoided collisions with a fixed object representing the rear of another vehicle in tests at 12 and 25 mph. The pickup has not yet been tested for pedestrian front crash prevention.

The 2020 Tacoma crew cab is only the third pickup to qualify for a 2019 safety award.