Weak bumper = wrecked quarter panel

From what I've seen in the 2005 up Tacoma there is no "crumple zone" in back, nothing strong enough other than the frame to absorb anything over 150 lbs of force from a rear hit! there is no welded metal box to resist/absorb impact energy. Guess these trucks are considered disposable by Toyota, unfortunately they are not sold at a disposable price! Even a cheap econobox Yaris will resist a rear collision better!
So my so called "image" of a truck to me is a Jacuzzi with aluminum siding that I must be very careful to drive and use. Can't beat the utility of it though.
Don't get me wrong I am aware that i'm whining and didn't have a crazy unique experience. I love the looks and functionality of my truck but when a "truck" is sold for $50k plus with creature comforts to replace a car, just drives me crazy that there is hardly any standards to adhere to or level of build quality at that price range.

 

I thought it was a tree...

 

You are thinking about it incorrectly. Parts designed to abdorb impact need to be soft not hard. Crumpling parts absorb impact to prevent it being transferred to other portions of the vehicle.
There are portions of the bed designed to bend in a serious rear end accident. These are crumple zones.
The body panels are also crumple zones.

Toyota could make a super solid frame, tailgate, and bumper but it would mean transfering the impact of the accident onto the passengers in a vehicle.
Now I’m not sure about you but I’d much rather my truck be totalled from the frame bending in a rear end collision than have a minimally damaged truck and have a wrecked neck or spine the rest of my life.

Toyota does adhere to safety standards. They just redesigned their front end to help spare pedestrians in case the driver were to hit one.

Toyota wants to save lives and spare injuries. Not make vehicles more dangerous in an accident so it avoids asthetic damage.

I backed into a mailbox because I was having an argument with my passenger. My bedside crumpled. $2,500 worth of damage. My fault, not Toyotas.
Sometimes dumb shit just happens.

I’m not going to put reinforcement plates in my truck that will cause harm to me or my family in a more serious accident.

 

Pakon,

That's exactly my point "a mail box crushed my bed" I've had both bed sides off at one time or another. When you hit the bed side it is attached with 6 mm bolts and a few plastic clips. that is the full extent of the bed side "structure". There simply is nothing else to absorb anything (crush zone=none). Sides are tacked on for looks and won't take any normal abuse or a collision. If you are going to hit the frame, the bed side or the bumper won't stop you or get in the way. After my collision I didn't feel any whiplash and the frame didn't bend neither did my extension for the bumper. Point is for a small amount of money and a few extra pounds a $2500 repair bill could be avoided. The manufacturer knows this and chooses a design that is far below the federal impact regulations for a car. They are not required to and don't make any effort to save their customers future repair bills. But that is nothing new for these small trucks. At least the front has aluminum mounting blocks to crush a little in a front end collision.

 

Packon,

Actually I've hit both!

 

The panel itself is designed to crumple. There isn’t an additional structure behind there.
Crumple zones mean the physical body panels and/frame are designed to crumple on impact absorbing the energy on impact. Which means they will damage more easily.

You are not understanding the physics behind a MVA.

If there were additional structures there it would make the truck more solid which means it would not crumple and would transfer energy to the passengers. You can’t have it both ways.

I do not want a device in my car that will prevent frame bending in the event of a collision. I value my body more than my stupid truck. Every pound of force you strengthen the frame by is a pound of force you take.

But I’ve actually been in a serious accident where I’m lucky to be alive let alone 95% recovered (100% won’t happen). Fuck the car. That’s what insurance is for. Not for a single moment did I feel bad at all about the totalled car.
I’m thankfull I wasn’t made a widower in the blink of an eye.

I think you are looking at it from the wrong perspective.

 

If your backing into trees, post in has stations and who knows what else to keep doing that much damage to your truck maybe it's the operator not the truck...kust a thoughr

 

All that thin sheet metal is almost entirely about weight savings not cost savings.

The pressure manufacturers are under to eek out every last MPG is crazy

 

Shearboy2005,

with a crew cab and a long bed you can't see the back of the truck and just take an educated guess. I'm in California where if you have anything bigger than a VW beetle and the crew cab's extremely large 25 foot turning radius, you are in trouble parking and driving here. Since Toyota knows you can't see and a tap is $2500 dollars in damage, they should include a backup camera or a backup sensor of some kind. Would cost them 20 bucks per vehicle to do that. For now the backup camera I installed and the added support should help now that this is my only vehicle. Thank god the Tacoma is narrow enough. The car was sold to buy a house for the family, no funds to replace it....

 

The "crumple zone", by definition, IS the frame. Specifically, the rear-most segment of the frame between the rear most suspension mount and the trailer hitch. If you look at virtually every rear-end collision a Tacoma is involved in that is significant enough to damage the frame, nearly all of them result in this segment of the frame being bent downward. Always downward. The consequence of this segment bending downward is also that the bed *appears* to be bent down relative to the cab -- such that it looks like the frame bends downward somewhere in the middle of the truck. This is just an illusion, however, since the bed sides follow the rear cross at the very back of the bed, which is connected to the rear segment of the frame, which bent downward.

The nice thing about the frame being designed to bend there, however, is that it is actually very easy to repair after a collision, because it is rare that the frame is damaged ahead of the rear suspension mount.

Now here is the thing; it is a truck. That means that 9 times out of 10, there is going to be a trailer hitch back there, and there is really nothing you can do to install a trailer hitch besides bolt it directly onto the frame. ALL trucks have the trailer hitch bolted directly to the frame, which means that any rear end collision on *any* truck, is going to be directed straight into the frame.

Any collision that goes straight into the frame will either kill the occupants, or damage the frame. If the frame is designed (as this one is) to restrict the frame damage to a "less essential" segment, then you have the optimal balance of "don't kill me" and "don't self destruct".

 

Since this thread has been revived - I think I should update my post from 5 years ago.

I have smacked my stock bumper on MANY things and have never gotten a damaged quarter panel/bedside from it.

However...

I have broken (3) tail lights due to the bumper kicking upwards. I have numerous bedside dents and damage from other sources (branches, logs, trees, rocks, exhaust tail pipe etc.) But nothing as a result of the rear bumper being hit....only broken tail lights.

I am long overdue for a high clearance rear and better bedsides.

 

You can't see the back of any truck or car. Until the advent of backup cameras and sensors everyone that backed up had to take an educated guess. Many people have and still do without hitting pat and trees...operator error.

 

You don't need to see the back of the vehicle. You need to know what is behind it and how far back. Sometimes, that can mean actually walking behind it and checking before you back up. But as you are backing up, you look at those things that may be ABOUT to leave your field of view, and remember where they are. Nobody should need technology to think for them, and it is never an excuse that the technology didn't see something.

I don't like technology taking over safety related tasks. When people become reliant on that technology, they become more dangerous, and no technology can account for that difference. Add a backup sensor and camera, and a kid playing under the bumper (don't try to apply adult logic to kids playing -- kids do weird stuff) gets run over because the driver was too lazy to walk around the vehicle and check -- because they're now relying on the sensors to tell them if something or someone is there, but the kid was too low to be picked up by the technology. All those Tesla crashes -- I'm sure the technology is a marvel and I know that the driver is always (or almost always?) at fault -- technically, but it scares me to think of my kids crossing at a crosswalk and one of those semi-autonomous vehicles comes by with nobody paying attention behind the wheel. The roads are a lot more dangerous now than they used to be, because it used to be that someone HAD to be watching the road.

 

96carboard,

My mistake is trying to use this truck as a car in a city with heavy traffic and miniscule parking lots/spaces. As in any city you don't want to jump out of the truck and run to the back. I don't want the other driver to assume I'm challenging/confronting them and with 2 or more cars trying to get my parking spot before I've even left, there is pressure to leave, city life is different everybody is competing and in a rush!

 

It makes no difference if its a car or a truck. You *still* need to be clear about who and what is around you at all times. And for that matter, once you've initially checked around the vehicle, the PICKUP is a heck of a lot *easier* to judge than more conventional cars, and the reason is because you can sit in the driver seat looking back, and you know *EXACTLY* where the bumper is, because you can see the bed and tailgate rails and know that you have precisely 5 inches beyond that.

And if you need to drive a pickup in a city (and I've commuted into the deepest streetcar railed depths of a big city every work day since I got my Tacoma a decade ago), there is absolutely no doubt that Tacoma is the only truck you CAN do this with. Any bigger and you WON'T be able to park.

Now my experience with Tacoma and collisions..... I've been hit from behind about a dozen times over the years. Zero damage. Well, zero damage to mine (trailer hitch), plenty of cracked plastic from the clowns who hit me. I've never unintentionally hit anything. I do intentionally bump/rest my trailer hitch against concrete walls in order to minimize how far I protrude into a parking garage.

 

I twisted the rear bumper corner backing out of the driveway into a snow pile from a plow that was across the street. I could not have been going more than1-2mph. Luckily it didn't transfer the impact to the bed side as in the OPs case. I was able to twist it back with a pipe wrench . I also tore the mudflaps right off in the first snow storm of the first winter of owning this truck.

 

Troyken,

Unfortunately light weight has turned into a disposable consumable product. From a business view it's a win-win for them. Being expensive to repair (cheap to make high cost replacement parts = profit) Trucks are often totaled as being too costly to repair thus removing them from the used car market= sales of replacement trucks. From Toyota's view I can understand, just don't agree with it, but who am I just the consumer!

 

I was going to add that we received a general email from Geico not too long ago advising of a regional increase in premiums due to the increased cost of repair and high degrees of collision damage.