IIHS Is Rating Cargo Vans and Work Trucks for the First Time — What It Means for Your Insurance

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety is about to do something it has never done in its 30-year history: formally rate the safety of cargo vans and work trucks. Starting this spring, IIHS will release occupant protection ratings for commercial vehicles with a gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) between 10,001 and 14,000 pounds — a class that includes the Ford Transit, Ram ProMaster, Chevy Express, Mercedes-Benz Sprinter, Ford Super Duty, and Ram HD.

For anyone who runs a business fleet, drives a work van, or manages commercial vehicles, the significance is hard to overstate. These vehicles have never been independently evaluated for occupant safety — and the gap is alarming. Many cargo vans and Class 3 trucks are sold without airbags, a feature standard in every passenger car on the road today.

What IIHS Is Rating — and What It Means

The first round of ratings will focus on occupant protection: whether vehicles are equipped with airbags, advanced seat belt systems, and related safety features. These aren't crash test results yet — IIHS is simultaneously conducting crash avoidance capability tests on its track, with those results expected later in 2026.

David Kidd, Vice President of Vehicle Research at IIHS, laid out the scope in a statement published March 12, 2026.

"Cargo vans and big pickups are only the beginning. In the coming years, we expect to expand our evaluations to include box trucks and potentially even tractor-trailers," Kidd said.

The vehicles in this initial evaluation include some of the most common commercial vehicles on U.S. roads. Delivery companies, contractors, plumbers, electricians, and small fleet operators depend on these vehicles daily — and until now, no independent safety organization has told them how these vehicles stack up when a crash happens.

The Safety Gap That Drove This Change

The numbers that prompted IIHS to act are stark. In 2023, 6,535 people were killed in crashes involving heavy- or medium-duty trucks or light vans — 16% of all roadway fatalities in the United States, according to IIHS data. That's a staggering toll from a vehicle category that has largely escaped independent safety scrutiny.

The root cause is a regulatory gap. Many government safety standards that apply to passenger cars — airbag requirements, automatic emergency braking mandates, advanced driver assistance systems — do not apply to commercial vehicles. As a result, a worker driving a cargo van every day may have less occupant protection than someone in a base-trim economy car.

Most people who die in commercial truck crashes aren't the truck drivers — they're occupants of other vehicles or pedestrians. But the drivers of cargo vans and work trucks face serious risk too, especially given the lack of airbag coverage in many models currently on the market.

What This Means for Your Commercial Auto Insurance

Here's where this story gets directly relevant to your bottom line. IIHS's sister organization, the Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI), has begun curating insurance loss data for commercial vehicles — tracking claims by vehicle model, just as it has done for passenger vehicles for decades.

In the passenger car market, HLDI data has been instrumental in how insurers price policies by vehicle model. A car with strong safety ratings and a low claim frequency costs less to insure than a similarly priced vehicle with poor ratings. The same dynamic is coming to commercial vehicles.

For small business owners and fleet managers, this creates a real financial incentive to choose safer vehicles. If IIHS ratings reveal that one cargo van model has superior airbag coverage and lower fatality rates in the HLDI claims data, expect insurers to start pricing that difference into commercial auto premiums within the next few years.

IIHS is also researching and promoting intelligent speed assistance (ISA) technology for fleets — systems that help drivers stay within posted speed limits. Fleet operators who adopt ISA and other telematics-based safety tools are already seeing premium discounts from some commercial auto carriers, and that trend is expected to accelerate as insurers gain better model-level claims data.

IIHS Has Done This Before — and It Worked

If you're wondering whether IIHS ratings actually move the needle on commercial vehicle safety, there's a compelling precedent. In 2010, IIHS began testing rear underride guards on semi-truck trailers — the metal barriers designed to keep passenger cars from sliding under a trailer in a rear-end collision. Early tests found that most guards were too weak to be effective.

After IIHS launched its ToughGuard award in 2017, the industry changed rapidly. At first, only one manufacturer qualified. Today, according to IIHS, almost every new dry van trailer earns the ToughGuard designation.

"Advancing commercial vehicle safety is a cornerstone of IIHS-HLDI's plan to reduce crash deaths in the U.S. Through independent evaluation and evidence-based guidance, we aim to help businesses and communities make safer choices," Kidd said.

IIHS plans to apply the same approach to side underride guards next — a technology that few trailers currently have but that could save over 300 lives per year, according to the organization's own research.

What You Should Do Now

Looking Ahead: What to Watch in 2026

IIHS expects to publish occupant protection ratings for cargo vans and Class 3 pickups this spring 2026, followed by crash avoidance capability ratings later in the year. The initial evaluation covers vehicles with a GVWR between 10,001 and 14,000 pounds — but expansion to box trucks and potentially tractor-trailers is already in the roadmap.

As HLDI's commercial vehicle claims database matures over the next few years, expect insurers to begin differentiating commercial auto premiums based on vehicle safety performance, just as they already do for personal auto policies. For businesses that proactively prioritize fleet safety now, that's an opportunity to get ahead of the curve before it becomes standard industry practice.

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