Whether you already own a 2025 model or have been thinking about shopping for a Ford Escape for sale, safety is one of the most important and prominent aspects of any vehicle. This rings especially true if you’re shopping for a vehicle for your family and want to double-check that it has safety ratings that can give you confidence on the road. With all of that being said, where does the 2025 Ford Escape fit into this paradigm? How safe is it? How well does it handle collisions? What are the driver safety aids like? What are the driver assistance features like? Can you reliably count on it to keep passengers in the front and rear rows safe? Well, the short answer to all of that is that it’s quite safe across the board, but if you want the details, let’s dive into the long answer.
A Look at the 2025 Ford Escape’s Safety Ratings
Most people look to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) for feedback on how safe a vehicle is. These tests aren’t for driving aids, driving assists, or driving awareness technology, but their focus is entirely on realistic, real-world crash testing and collision ratings. They give a completely different outlook on a vehicle’s performance than what you might expect from day-to-day travel when it comes to collision mitigation technology.
The IIHS posted its 2025 model year ratings for the Ford Escape, following up on very commendable ratings for the 2024 model year. When it comes to the total scores, it managed mostly green ratings or “Good” ratings, according to the IIHS. This includes good ratings for crashworthiness when it comes to reducing neck, chest, thigh, and lower leg injuries during a crash, as well as top ratings for the restraints and protecting those during a head-on collision. Those top marks also mostly carry over for the front passenger, with good ratings for reducing injuries and keeping the injury measures as low as structurally possible.
When you look at the NHTSA crash reports, the Ford Escape manages some exemplary results. The 2025 Escape managed five stars out of five stars regarding its overall safety rating. It also managed five stars for its frontal crash rating, driver-side crash rating, and passenger-side crash rating. It also managed four out of five stars regarding the roll-over rating, giving it some very impressive safety stats overall for the model year. Those figures were consistent for the front and rear seats, both of which also scored top marks for the crash report, along with overall side impact collisions, side barrier collisions, and side pole collisions.
Both the NHTSA and IIHS also note that the 2025 Ford Escape has implementations for safety belts and child protection. The lower anchors and tethers, or LATCH, received high marks from the IIHS, along with the seat belt reminders. So this makes the 2025 Escape great as a standard daily driver, and when it comes to having safety features for those with little kids or young ones tucked into a carseat.
Safety Mechanisms
The 2025 Ford Escape comes with plenty of active and reactive safety mechanisms, such as multiple airbags throughout the cabin. This includes driver knee airbags, front seat-mounted side airbags, and a patented Personal Safety System that features dual-stage driver and front-passenger airbags, along with the patented Safety Canopy system for passengers across the front and second row. This also pairs well with the height-adjustable retractable safety belts and the three-point restraints on all five seating positions.
But what about families with kids or small passengers? The Escape also comes with lower anchors and tethers for children. Belt-Minder also comes standard for the first and second row to remind passengers to fasten their seat belts fastened before driving. Now, if there is a collision or an accident, the SOS Post-Crash Alert System is a feature that comes standard across the entire trim lineup, which activates the hazard lights and an intermittent horn sound after the airbags have been deployed. The purpose of the SOS Post-Crash Alert System is not only to alert others that the vehicle has been in a crash but also to hopefully get others to call emergency services if the occupants are unable to do so themselves.
Safety and Driver-Assistance Features
Part of the collision mitigation system is the Advancetrac with Roll Stability Control, or RSC. This is, in effect, an automated system that actively attempts to keep the vehicle stable, in hopes that the SOS Post-Crash Alert never has to be used. This system works with the Torque Vectoring Control to provide the Ford Escape with stability management and traction control so that it can monitor and identify potential scenarios where the Escape might seem prone to rolling over and utilize corrective stability measures to keep the vehicle level.
The stability management isn’t the only high-tech system that keeps the Escape on the road. The compact SUV also has a number of other driver management assists that make it safe during travel, including a suite of features powered by the Ford Co-Pilot360 system, which manages driver awareness functionality, driver aids, and stability assists. All of these features work in conjunction with the Ford SYNC system. For instance, using the 8-inch or 13.2-inch touchscreen, you can utilize the 360-degree camera to monitor all sides of the vehicle, perfect for staying visually alert of potential collisions or objects you may encounter when driving, reversing, or attempting to park.
Features like the Reverse Brake Assist are also useful for automatically braking when the sonar detects potential objects obstructing the path of the Escape, even if they are in your blind spot or you don’t see them on the camera. This also works in parallel with the BLIS, or Blind Spot Information System, which alerts drivers to the other vehicles, pedestrians, cyclists, or objects in the blind spot of the Escape; with the Cross-Traffic Alert, it also informs you about whether a potential collision is imminent due to an object possibly being in the blind-spot of the vehicle.
Pre-Collision Assist comes with Automatic Emergency Braking, as well as built-in safety for convenience features like the Adaptive Cruise Control with Stop-and-Go functionality. This also ties into the Lane Centering feature to keep the Escape within its designated lane, informing drivers that it is drifting out of the lane. It’s a cohesive system that combines active and passive features to add an extra layer of protection during your drive.
Is the 2025 Ford Escape Safe Enough for You?
From the outset, the 2025 Escape has a lot of great standard safety features regardless of which model you go with. Of course, while the 2025 Ford Escape may lack other high-end Ford technologies like the semi-autonomous BlueCruise or automated parking, it still has a robust suite of active safety features and technology across its trim line and has impressive ratings from the NHTSA.
The big question is whether this satisfies the safety requirements you expect from a compact SUV like the 2025 Escape. Would these safety features compel you to shop for a Ford Escape for sale or consider trading in your current vehicle for one? For many, this compact SUV embodies the level of safety and security they expect from a modern vehicle, but to be absolutely sure, it’s best to visit your local Ford dealership and see them for yourself.
