Trends and geography

What NHTSA Crash Tests Show

The agency crash-tests cars itself and publishes the photographs. Here is what it has rated, and how the ratings changed in 2011.

2 min read · 101 figures, all from the federal record · rebuilt 3 weeks ago

Alongside the complaint file, NHTSA crash-tests vehicles itself under the New Car Assessment Program and publishes the results — including the photographs taken during the tests. 9,018 tested configurations are loaded here, covering 1,981 model years with a star rating and 3,041 with an official crash photograph.

Those photographs are the only images on this site. They were taken by a federal agency, of the exact model year they appear on, and are in the public domain. There are no stock photos here and no manufacturer press shots, because a picture of a car like the one you are reading about is decoration pretending to be evidence.

Overall star ratings, as awarded

5 stars 2,202 61.5%

4 stars 1,308 36.5%

3 stars 53 1.5%

2 stars 19 0.5%

Configurations by overall rating.

Highest rollover probability on record

Vehicle	Rollover risk	Rollover stars
2006 Ford Ranger	30.6%	2 of 5
2006 Ford Ranger	30.6%	2 of 5
2007 Ford Ranger	30.6%	2 of 5
2007 Ford Ranger	30.6%	2 of 5
2005 Ford Ranger	30.6%	2 of 5
2005 Ford Ranger	30.6%	2 of 5
2020 RAM 2500	29.2%	3 of 5
2020 RAM 2500	29.2%	3 of 5
2020 RAM 2500	29.2%	3 of 5
2021 RAM 2500	29.2%	3 of 5
2021 RAM 2500	29.2%	3 of 5
2021 RAM 2500	29.2%	3 of 5
2020 Ford Ranger	29.2%	3 of 5
2020 Ford Ranger	29.2%	3 of 5
2019 Ford Ranger	29.2%	3 of 5

NHTSA's calculated probability of rollover in a single-vehicle crash.

Source — NHTSA New Car Assessment Program, via the agency's Safety Ratings API.

How this was made. Nobody wrote this article and left it to age. It is generated by a query against the complaint database, and rebuilt every time the data is — so the numbers in the sentences above are the numbers as they stand today, not as they stood when somebody last had time to update them. How the grading works.