Crashes will make your project fail. Don’t use it. After many years developers just aren’t able to deliver trustworthy and stable software. It destroys projects!

Hitting Ctrl+S every few minutes has basically become a compulsive behavior for me at this point, for any program (not just video editors).

Listen, buddy, if I followed this advice, I wouldn't be able to use any software. As a matter of fact, Kdenlive is actually one of the better behaved tools in my toolbox. Nothing's perfect, but at least there are almost always reasonable workarounds (like saving your work early and often).