For enhanced safety, the front and rear seat shoulder belts of the Nissan Titan have pretensioners to tighten the seatbelts and eliminate dangerous slack in the event of a collision and force limiters to limit the pressure the belts will exert on the passengers. The Ford F-150 doesn’t offer pretensioners for its rear seat belts.
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 Titan are reminded to check the back seat if they opened the rear door before starting out. The F-150 doesn’t offer a back seat reminder.
The Nissan Titan 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 F-150 doesn’t offer knee airbags.
The Titan’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 F-150.
To help make backing out of a parking space safer, the Titan has a standard rear cross-path warning system, which uses sensors in the rear bumper to alert the driver to vehicles approaching from the side, helping the driver avoid collisions. Rear cross-path warning costs extra on the F-150.
Both the Titan and the F-150 have standard driver and passenger frontal airbags, front side-impact airbags, side-impact head airbags, height adjustable front shoulder belts, plastic fuel tanks, four-wheel antilock brakes, traction control, electronic stability systems to prevent skidding, crash mitigating brakes, rearview cameras, available all wheel drive, daytime running lights and around view monitors.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration does side impact tests on new vehicles. In this test, which crashes the vehicle into a flat barrier at 38.5 MPH and into a post at 20 MPH, results indicate that the Nissan Titan is safer than the Ford F-150:
|
Titan |
F-150 |
|
Front Seat |
|
STARS |
5 Stars |
5 Stars |
Chest Movement |
.7 inches |
.8 inches |
Abdominal Force |
125 lbs. |
152 lbs. |
|
Rear Seat |
|
STARS |
5 Stars |
|
|
Into Pole |
|
STARS |
5 Stars |
5 Stars |
HIC |
134 |
257 |
Spine Acceleration |
34 G’s |
39 G’s |
New test not comparable to pre-2011 test results. More stars = Better. Lower test results = Better.