2019 Honda Pilot Receives IIHS Top Safety Pick+ Rating
The new Honda Pilot was redesigned and refreshed for the 2019 model year and so far it seems as though the company did a good job of it, as the popular SUV has just received the 2018 Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s Top Safety Pick+ overall safety rating, the highest honor in automotive safety.
The requirements for qualifying for an IIHS Top Safety Pick+ rating grow ever stricter each year. To earn the distinction this time around, 2019 model year vehicles were expected to earn the highest possible rating of “Good” in driver-side small overlap front, moderate overlap front, side, roof strength, and head restraint crash tests.
It also needed a rating of “Acceptable” or “Good” in the passenger-side small overlap test, available “Good”-rated headlights, and an available front crash prevention system with a rating of “Advanced” or “Superior” (the two highest possible ratings).
That last requirement was easily met thanks to Honda Sensing, the automaker’s comprehensive suite of safety and driver assistive technologies, which includes front collision mitigation, lane keeping assist, rear cross-traffic alert, blind spot information, and adaptive cruise control features. Honda Sensing has been progressively rolled out across the entire Honda lineup and will soon be offered as standard tech on every one of the manufacturer’s vehicles.
“The updated Pilot may have more aggressive styling to better match its true capability, but we also got aggressive on safety performance and driver-assistive features.” said Ray Mikiciuk, assistant vice president of Honda Automobile Sales. “IIHS rated Pilot’s front crash prevention system ‘SUPERIOR’, and that’s just one of many features included in Honda Sensing, now standard on all Pilot trims.”
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