What Does BSI Mean On Honda Cars?
Honda cars are incredibly popular among U.S. drivers for reasons ranging from their fuel-efficiency to reliability, affordability, spacious and comfortable interiors, low maintenance costs, and reasonable performance. But perhaps the single most important consideration for the American car-buying public is safety, which continues to be a top priority for many car buyers.
At different times, several Honda models have been awarded Top Safety Pick+ ratings by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) after earning top scores in all the organization's crash testing. In 2014, for instance, the Honda Accord Sedan and Coupe, Honda Civic Sedan, and Honda Odyssey all bagged IIHS's highest honor to crown Honda as the automaker with the most 2014 awards overall.
Honda's reputation as a brand that builds some of the world's safest cars is helped in part by its long list of advanced safety and driver-assistive technologies, including BSI, which stands for Blind Spot Information System. The system consists of a pair of sensors that monitor the blind spots on either side of your vehicle for traffic approaching from behind. It can detect objects that are within 13 feet of the outside mirrors toward the back of the vehicle and 10.5 feet away on either side and then alert you to their presence in order to reduce the risk of collisions when changing lanes or while reversing. The monitoring system gets turned off at speeds less than 6 mph to avoid false alerts.
Which Honda vehicles have BSI?
Honda offers BSI as a standard or optional feature on many of its vehicles. The flagship Honda Pilot, for example, now comes equipped as standard with BSI (with rear cross-traffic alert) after the Japanese automaker dropped the entry-level LX for 2025 and made the Sport the new 2025 base Pilot model. BSI is also a standard feature on the Honda Odyssey, Honda Passport, Honda Ridgeline, and the all-electric Honda Prologue. However, if you want the Honda CR-V, and BSI is a must-have, you'll need to look beyond the entry-level LX and move up a trim to the EX (or higher) to find it.
Like the CR-V, the subcompact Honda HR-V also doesn't have BSI in the base LX trim, so you'll have to opt for the Sport or higher models in order to benefit from the feature. BSI is also not offered on the base models of Honda cars like the Accord and Civic, but you do have it on the Accord EX and higher trims as well as the Civic Sport Hybrid trims and Civic Hatchbacks.