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 Ram 1500 doesn’t offer pretensioners for its rear seat belts.
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 Ram 1500 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 Ram 1500.
To help make backing out of a parking space safer, the Titan has standard Rear Cross Traffic Alert, helping the driver avoid collisions. Ram charges extra for Rear Cross Path Detection on the Ram 1500.
The Titan’s driver alert monitor detects an inattentive driver then sounds a warning and suggests a break. According to the NHTSA, drivers who fall asleep cause about 100,000 crashes and 1500 deaths a year. The Ram 1500 doesn’t offer a driver alert monitor.
Both the Titan and the Ram 1500 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, 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 post at 20 MPH, results indicate that the Nissan Titan is safer than the Ram 1500:
|
Titan |
Ram 1500 |
|
Into Pole |
|
STARS |
5 Stars |
5 Stars |
HIC |
134 |
165 |
Spine Acceleration |
34 G’s |
40 G’s |
New test not comparable to pre-2011 test results. More stars = Better. Lower test results = Better.