For enhanced safety, the front and rear seat shoulder belts of the Toyota Tundra 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 Tundra 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 Toyota Tundra 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 Tundra 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 F-150 doesn’t offer a whiplash protection system.
The Tundra’s standard lane departure warning system alerts a temporarily inattentive driver when the vehicle begins to leave its lane and gently nudges the vehicle back towards its lane. A lane departure warning system costs extra on the F-150.
Both the Tundra and the F-150 have standard driver and passenger frontal airbags, front side-impact airbags, side-impact head airbags, height adjustable front shoulder belts, four-wheel antilock brakes, traction control, electronic stability systems to prevent skidding, crash mitigating brakes, post-collision automatic braking systems, daytime running lights, rearview cameras, available four-wheel drive, blind spot warning systems, around view monitors and rear cross-path warning.
For its performance in IIHS driver-side and passenger-side small overlap frontal, moderate overlap frontal, updated side impact, headlight, daytime pedestrian crash prevention, and nighttime pedestrian crash prevention testing, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety grants the Tundra its highest rating: “Top Safety Pick Plus” for 2023, a rating granted to only 29 vehicles tested by the IIHS. The F-150 was last a “Top Safety Pick Plus” in 2019 but no longer qualifies.