Honda CR-V SUV - Reliability & safety

The Honda CR-V has an excellent reputation, finishing 21st overall out of 75 cars in our 2020 Driver Power owner satisfaction survey. Safety is markedly improved, too, because there's now a whole array of active safety kit thrown in as standard, rather than being optional or limited to top-spec versions.

Honda CR-V reliability

While the car has changed substantially, there should be enough that’s familiar about the CR-V to reassure customers it'll be just as reliable as before. That’s important when the outgoing car did so well in this regard, coming 21st out of 75 new cars for reliability and build quality in our 2020 Driver Power owner survey with 17% of owners reporting a fault in the first year.

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Safety

Whereas before you had to buy an expensive CR-V to benefit from the Honda Sensing suite of active safety technology, it's now fitted across every trim level. This is a great move for consumers, as is the car's five-star Euro NCAP score. When tested in early 2019, the CR-V received a 93% score in the adult occupant category and 83% for child occupant protection. Scores of 70% and 76% for the vulnerable road users and safety assist categories respectively secured the Honda the top overall score.

Honda Sensing includes autonomous emergency braking, forward collision warning, lane-departure warning and lane-keeping assistance. There's also adaptive cruise control (which can predict cutting-in traffic) and traffic-sign recognition that flags road signs in the instrument cluster. It's also possible to specify the CR-V with blind-spot monitoring, cross-traffic monitoring (which detects cars approaching from the rear) and a rear-view camera with a normal, wide-angle or top-down view.