- Honda is aware of 412 reports that may be related to the alleged defect.
- The Office of Defects Investigation has upgraded the probe to an engineering analysis.
- The NHTSA says it’s aware of at least three crashes and fires related to the AEB fault.
It’s one thing to trust your car to save you from a crash, but what happens when it starts seeing threats that aren’t there? That’s the question at the heart of a new investigation launched by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which is looking into over 290,000 Honda vehicles in the US for an issue with their automatic emergency braking (AEB) systems. The probe was launched after several reports of crashes and injuries tied to the alleged defect.
It all started last March when the NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) began looking into the 2019-2022 Honda Insight and 2019-2023 Honda Passport. What began as a preliminary evaluation has since escalated into a full-on engineering analysis to “further assess the scope, frequency, and potential safety related consequences” of the problem.
Read: NHTSA Gets Serious About Phantom Braking Issue Now Affecting 3 Million Hondas
According to the safety agency, inadvertent and unrequired activation of the AEB system can increase the risk of a collision. Honda is aware of 412 reports that may related to the alleged defect but has claimed that some customers may have an “inadequate understanding of the AEB system and its limitations.” Several complaints filed with the ODI claim that Honda dealerships have been unable to reproduce the condition and stated the false activation is “considered normal AEB operation.”
Evidently, the NHTSA believes (and we agree) that an AEB system activating when there’s no obstruction in the vehicle’s path is not normal behavior and unnecessarily increases the odds of an accident occurring as a result.
Honda’s Phantom Braking Problem Grows
The current investigation covers 295,125 vehicles, specifically the Insight and Passport. So far, the ODI has tracked 106 incidents related to the issue, including eight injuries and three crashes. Some of these crashes even involved fires, though details about how that escalated are still unclear. The agency’s engineering analysis is the last step before they can force Honda to issue a recall.
Interestingly, this isn’t the first NHTSA probe launched into Honda models with potentially faulty AEB systems. Last year, the Office of Defects Investigation announced an engineering analysis into almost 3 million Accord, Accord Hybrid, CR-V, and CR-V Hybrid vehicles from the 2017-2022 model years with AEB systems that may also activate with no apparent obstruction in the road.
