• The Rivian R1T is the safest pickup regardless of power source, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS).
• The IIHS gave the R1T a Top Safety Pick+ award, its most prestigious accolade.
• It’s the only electric truck sold in the U.S. whose safety results have been published.

Pickups aren’t usually as safe as regular cars and SUVs, but that doesn’t apply to the Rivian R1T. It is the only electric truck to be named a Top Safety Pick+ by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. This is a remarkable achievement for a young company like Rivian to make one of the safest vehicles on the road, and it makes the updated R1T sound like an even more enticing proposition.

The Rivian R1T has kept the highest safety distinction awarded by the IIHS for the last three years straight. It got top marks in all of agency’s crash tests (including the small overlap crash test), but it only got an ‘Acceptable’ rating for front crash prevention. While its overall rating in the moderate overlap front crash test was “good”—the best grade—its rating for leg and foot injury prevention, specifically, was merely “acceptable”. That was not enough to bring down its overall rating, putting it among the safest 31 vehicles you can buy in the U.S. today.

Watching the crash test videos gives you an appreciation of the R1T’s very stiff structure and its ability to dissipate the massive energy of a severe frontal crash. You can see how the revised 2024 model compares to the 2022 model. You can see the difference in the moderate overlap crash tests videos.

It’s worth noting that the R1T is the only electric pickup to have its safety results published by the IIHS. The pickup with the second-best safety performance after the R1T is not electric: The Toyota Tundra, which gets a Top Safety Pick award. 

Rivian recently overhauled its R1 lineup and created the second generation of the vehicle, which retains the same body but has big changes under the skin. It features 11 cameras (of much higher resolution than before the second generation update) and five radars that give it a complete 360-degree picture of its surroundings. It also has “AI prediction technology” which should help it better anticipate a potentially hazardous situation.

All R1s have standard blind spot monitoring and a highway assistant. You can upgrade to the Rivian Autonomy Platform+ to add an automatic lane change feature with the Enhanced Highway Assist that will be introduced before the end of the year. The manufacturer also says that the revised headlights will gain what it calls an Adaptive Drive Beam feature, which is basically a high beam assistant that shades areas where it detects oncoming drivers. Similar features have been available in some European-market cars for a while, but Rivian will be among the first to offer it in the U.S.