Safest SUVs

Safest SUVs — ranked

Ranked by our ForCar Safety Score — NHTSA five-star crash testing (60%) combined with owner-reported injury severity (25%) and recall frequency (15%). Every vehicle here already aces the government tests, so the score is what separates them — across this group it runs 79–99/100, and of 100 qualifying models we show the top 40.

How SUVs compare with everything else

Share of models earning five stars overall, by body type. This is the context a single ranking can't give — whether this kind of vehicle is safer as a class, or just well represented:

Read it as a share, not a count: a type with few tested models can top the chart on a handful of results. The bar highlighted is the one this page is about.

Which brands show up most

Ford puts the most models on this particular list (7 of 100). That is not the same thing as the safest brand overall, which is measured as a share of everything a maker builds — here it is a share of 100 SUVs, not of the whole market:

For the share-based view see the safest car brands.

Five stars, and still recalled

Of the 100 five-star SUVs here, 80 carry 15+ recall campaigns and the median sits at 42 per model, while 1 has none at all. A crash test measures one controlled impact; it says nothing about what the manufacturer had to fix afterwards — and across these 100 SUVs that is 42 campaigns for the median car. NHTSA publishes both records but never puts them side by side, which is how a 5-star Ford can also be the most-recalled vehicle on the page.

Recall counts cover a nameplate's whole production history, so long-running models accumulate more — which is part of why the median here is 42 while 1 of the 100 have none. Check the exact car with our VIN recall lookup before buying.

Other safety lists

How we score safety