The Safest Midsize Truck on American Roads Just Got the Worst Crash Test Score

Eighty-four people died in Honda Ridgelines over the past decade. That is not a typo, and it is not a rounding error. Across ten years of FARS data and an estimated 3.5 billion vehicle-miles traveled, Honda's unibody pickup produced a fatality rate of 0.24 per 100 million VMT, the lowest of any midsize truck by a factor of twelve over the Ford Ranger.^[1]

On May 19, IIHS released its 2026 crash test results. Of sixteen vehicles tested, only two earned any safety award. Honda's truck was not one of them, receiving a Poor rating in the updated moderate overlap front test for rear-passenger protection, a Poor rating for vehicle-to-vehicle front crash prevention, and a Poor rating for pedestrian crash prevention, while its headlights scored Marginal. Its collision mitigation braking system, according to IIHS, failed to slow the vehicle across multiple test scenarios with both pedestrian and vehicle targets.^[2]

Both findings are correct at the same time, and the reason they can coexist reveals something uncomfortable about how Americans decide which truck won't kill them.

What crash tests actually measure

A crash test is a controlled physics experiment. A specific mass hits a specific barrier at a specific speed, and sensors record what happens to the dummies inside. The 2026 IIHS tests expanded the experiment in a critical way: they started measuring what happens to the person in the back seat, not just the one holding the steering wheel. They also raised the bar on automatic emergency braking, demanding the system stop for pedestrians at night under headlight illumination alone.

Honda's pickup failed the rear-passenger evaluation so decisively that it produced the worst result IIHS recorded across the sixteen vehicles evaluated. During the moderate overlap front test, the rear dummy's lap belt migrated from the pelvis to the abdomen, a mechanism that produces internal organ injuries in real crashes. A headrest detached from the rear seat during the rebound phase. A piece of interior trim broke loose near the rear occupant's head. For a vehicle marketed to families with crew-cab seating, this is the test that matters most.^[3]

What death rates actually measure

A fatality rate is an uncontrolled population experiment. It captures every variable simultaneously: vehicle structure, driver demographics, road types, speed distributions, impairment rates, seatbelt usage, and the fundamental question of who buys the truck in the first place.

Ridgeline buyers are a particular species, and the data proves it. Fewer than one in five drivers involved in fatal Ridgeline crashes tested positive for any substance, according to FARS toxicology data, which puts it in the lower bracket of impairment among pickups.^[1] This is a truck purchased by suburban homeowners who need to haul mulch on Saturdays, not tow horse trailers across Wyoming at 2 AM while negotiating the contents of a Yeti cooler. The driver pool self-selects for caution in ways that no crash test can capture and no marketing brochure will admit.

Meanwhile, the Ford Ranger, with its 2.91 death rate, has an older fleet skewing heavily toward the body-on-frame 1990s and 2000s models that were essentially shrunken F-150s with thinner roof pillars and optional side airbags. Comparing a 2017-and-newer unibody to a fleet weighted toward Clinton-era ladder frames isn't an apples-to-oranges comparison so much as an apples-to-Oldsmobile comparison.

The design age problem

Honda launched the second-generation Ridgeline in 2016 for the 2017 model year and has refreshed it exactly once, a 2020 facelift for MY2021 that changed the grille and added wireless CarPlay without touching the crash structure, airbag design, or restraint geometry for rear passengers. The crash structure competing against 2026 IIHS criteria was engineered when the iPhone 7 was the hot new phone and ride-hailing companies were still claiming they'd have fully autonomous fleets by 2020.

A decade-old design can still protect the driver adequately because the basic physics of a front-impact crumple zone haven't changed much since the mid-2010s, when most manufacturers converged on competent front-crash structures. What has changed is the standard for everything behind the B-pillar: rear restraint geometry, belt pretensioner calibration, headrest retention under rebound loads, and the entire AEB stack that didn't exist in its current form when the Ridgeline's platform was finalized.

NHTSA still gives it five stars

Adding another layer to the confusion, NHTSA's own rating system, which uses different test protocols, different impact speeds, and different evaluation criteria, still awards the Ridgeline its maximum safety rating. Two organizations, ostensibly measuring the same thing, reaching opposite conclusions about the same truck. The divergence isn't a scandal but a structural feature of having two independent testing regimes that weight different crash modes differently and update their protocols on different timelines.^[4]

What this means if you're shopping

If you are the only person who will ever sit in your midsize truck, the Ridgeline's real-world death rate still reflects a genuinely low-risk vehicle driven by a genuinely low-risk population. Unibody construction, competent front-crash geometry, and a buyer demographic that keeps impairment rates below the segment average produce real results on real roads.

If you plan to put your children in the back seat, the IIHS results say something the FARS data cannot: the rear restraint system does not meet 2026 standards for protecting rear occupants in a frontal crash, with the lap belt migrating and the headrest failing under loads that replicate common crash geometries. The AEB system that should prevent the crash from happening at all does not reliably function in the scenarios IIHS tested. These are not theoretical concerns but measured failure modes in a controlled environment specifically designed to replicate common crash geometries.

Check your VIN at nhtsa.gov/recalls. If you own a 2017-2026 Ridgeline, understand that your truck has the best death statistics in its class and the worst current lab performance. Both of those facts should inform your next purchase. Neither one alone tells the full story.

Source: NHTSA FARS 2014–2023, IIHS 2026 crash test results. FARS captures only fatal crashes; the Ridgeline’s low death rate does not necessarily indicate low injury rates. VMT estimates use NHTS averages and introduce ±15% uncertainty for low-volume models like the Ridgeline (262,500 estimated fleet). IIHS updated its testing protocols for 2026, making direct comparisons with prior-year ratings invalid. See methodology for caveats.