In the past twenty years hundreds of infants and young children have died after being left in vehicles, usually by accident. When turning the vehicle off, drivers of the Tacoma are reminded to check the back seat if they opened the rear door before starting out. The Ranger doesn’t offer a back seat reminder.
The Toyota Tacoma has standard driver and front passenger side knee airbags mounted low on the dashboard. These airbags helps prevent the driver and front passenger from sliding under their seatbelts or the main frontal airbags; this keeps them better positioned during a collision for maximum protection. Knee airbags also help keep the legs from striking the dashboard, preventing knee and leg injuries in the case of a serious frontal collision. The Ranger doesn’t offer knee airbags.
The Tacoma has standard Active Headrests, which use a specially designed headrest to protect the driver and front passenger from whiplash. During a rear-end collision, the Active Headrests system moves the headrests forward to prevent neck and spine injuries. The Ranger doesn’t offer a whiplash protection system.
The Tacoma’s standard lane departure warning system alerts a temporarily inattentive driver when the vehicle begins to leave its lane. A lane departure warning system costs extra on the Ranger.
The Tacoma offers an optional Panoramic View/Multi-Terrain Monitor to allow the driver to see objects all around the vehicle on a screen. The Ranger only offers a rear monitor and front and rear parking sensors that beep or flash a light. That doesn’t help with obstacles to the sides.
Both the Tacoma and the Ranger have standard driver and passenger frontal airbags, front side-impact airbags, side-impact head airbags, front seatbelt pretensioners, height adjustable front shoulder belts, plastic fuel tanks, four-wheel antilock brakes, traction control, electronic stability systems to prevent skidding, crash mitigating brakes, daytime running lights, rearview cameras, available four-wheel drive, blind spot warning systems and rear cross-path warning.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration does 35 MPH front crash tests on new vehicles. In this test, results indicate that the Toyota Tacoma is safer than the Ford Ranger:
|
|
Tacoma |
Ranger |
|
|
Passenger |
|
| STARS |
4 Stars |
4 Stars |
| HIC |
221 |
344 |
| Neck Compression |
12 lbs. |
110 lbs. |
New test not comparable to pre-2011 test results. More stars = Better. Lower test results = Better.
Instrumented handling tests conducted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and analysis of its dimensions indicate that the Tacoma, with its four-star roll-over rating, is 6.5% to 14.5% less likely to roll over than the Ranger, which received a three-star rating.
For its top level performance in IIHS driver-side small overlap frontal, moderate overlap frontal, side impact, rear impact and roof-crush tests, its standard front crash prevention system, its “Acceptable” rating in the new passenger-side small overlap crash test, and its available headlight’s “Good” rating, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety grants the Tacoma the rating of “Top Safety Pick” for 2019, a rating granted to only 183 vehicles tested by the IIHS. The Ranger was last qualified as a “Top Safety Pick” in 2017.