Two years after initially opening its investigation, the NHTSA has expanded its probe to include 1.3 million additional vehicles.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has been looking into whether 3 million Honda vehicles are at risk of randomly activating their automatic emergency braking systems, regardless of whether there is an actual obstruction. Back in 2022, the agency looked into 2018-19 Honda Accord and 2017-19 Honda CR-V models to determine the scale of vehicles engaging automatic emergency braking (or Collision Mitigation Braking System (CMBS), as Honda calls it) for no reason.
Now, the scope of the NHTSA’s probe covers 2,997,604 vehicles. The expanded investigation folds in the 2020-2022 Honda Accord and CR-V, in addition to the initial round of cars. The Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) is also conducting an “engineering analysis”, which brings us one step closer to an actual recall. We don’t have a full-scale recall campaign on our hands just yet, but that may happen depending on the outcome of that analysis.
According to the ODI report, there have been 1,294 consumer complaints of unexpected activation of the automatic emergency braking system in the affected vehicles. Taking duplicate reports across multiple data sources into consideration, there have been 47 crashes and 93 injury incidents that could be related to the cars’ “phantom braking” condition.
The ODI redacted the exact number of reports Honda indicated. However, the automaker alleges its own investigation found that “some customers probably had an inadequate understanding of the CMBS and its limitations.” Customers, on the other hand, state in their complaints that dealer technicians were not able to reproduce the condition, and that they were informed the alleged inadvertent braking events are considered “normal CMBS operation”.
We’ll have to wait and see whether this situation evolves into a full-blown recall. If you own a 2017-2022 CR-V or 2018-2022 Accord, though, you’ll want to pay attention to any developments with this investigation.
