13 ms·

1.7M Hondas are being investigated for phantom braking

103 points by qualudeheart 5y ago

jeffbee 5y ago
Not a lot of details. Why only accord and cr-v? My Clarity reliably slams on the brakes if I pass over a certain spot on CA-24 in Oakland with the ACS engaged. And the FCWS freaks out at low speeds frequently. Almost certainly the same hardware that’s on an accord.
- ericbarrett 5y ago
  Might just be statistics; the Accord and CR-V are very popular. You should report those issues: https://www.nhtsa.gov/report-a-safety-problem#index https://www.nhtsa.gov/report-a-safety-problem#index
- bdcravens 5y ago
  Perhaps they have had the full safety suite longer than other models?
jacquesm 5y ago
I got rid of a Mercedes C class for this exact same reason, it tried to kill me - twice - and that was enough for me. No more automatic brakes on my cars, the risks don't seem to outweigh the advantages. At least Honda seems to be responsible enough to address this. According to MB there was absolutely nothing wrong with my car, it was 'operating as designed'.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- 3pt14159 5y ago
  Yikes. I remember when my dad bought the first fly-by-wire car and even back then I was kinda spooked by it but accepted that adults knew what they were doing. The funny thing is that our next door neighbour bought the same car and the computer saved his life when a semi-transport truck merged into him and it took over the wheel. I'm still on team "put computers into cars" for the long term benefit of ending routine automotive collisions but the medium term is frightening.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    If not for many years of pingpong I probably would have smashed into a bridge support. Crap car. The situation is a bridge with two steel supports rising up with a 2 ton weight on top to lift the bridge, apparently the radar return of the posts is such that the radar interprets it as an imminent frontal collision if you pass between the two posts. And then immediately hits the brakes, hard. Second time was in a bend, with a big sign on the far side of the bend (me on the inner lane). Same stuff. If there had been oncoming traffic I would have certainly hit it because the car became uncontrollable instantly.
    - 3pt14159 5y ago
      Wow that is bonkers. Do you think Musk is right about the audiovisual-only approach to self-driving automotives? I must say I rarely disagree with his thinking when it comes to physics and computer science, but that was one of the few times I thought he was wrong and I'm still not sure, but your story does make for a compelling piece of evidence.
      - mjevans 5y ago
        If we had Scifi style millimeter wave radar (I'm thinking 'Snow Crash' (book) style stuff) that gave the computer a surface shape and 'signature' model to think about? That'd probably be the safest since it's better than human vision ever could be, though it'd still be tough since humans are analog supercomputers that are well versed in traversing 3.5 dimensions of space and the advanced memory and hazard prediction elements really help. Vision based computer systems really need the persistence and object recognition factors. A strong specialized faked intelligence might be sufficient, more so if it's less distracted than humans.
        the__alchemist 5y ago
        I'd love to see something like Knight Visions. Even if it were just an IR overlay, in a way that looked natural, and was smaller/lighter/better FOV than traditional NVGs. The mm-wave part would be great too!
- blueprint 5y ago
  Mercedes treated me similarly. I had a brand new sprinter van. The power braking fluid lines exploded just after I got off the highway. I got extremely lucky it didn't happen 5 seconds earlier than it did. Turns out they use plastic rings instead of metal ones and it turns out it happens to lots of people. They refused to buy back the vehicle. I wanted to sue them but I've got too much stuff on my plate, or so I tell myself. Needless to say, I lost a lot of trust in them and (perhaps stupidly) sold the van shortly afterwards.
  - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
    > Needless to say, I lost a lot of trust in them and (perhaps stupidly) sold the van shortly afterwards. I know this is very off-topic but don't beat yourself up about making quick decisions like this that cut that kind of persistent, simmering rage out of your life. We have enough of this stuff with people in our lives, often unavoidably, so letting appliances/devices/products cause it is not something we have to tolerate. If a _thing_ makes you feel unsatisfiable anger, get rid of it.
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      Very good advice. Vote with your feet and move on. Life really is too short, if MB wants to burn their brand more power to them. I bought a 25 year old car and had it rebuilt end-to-end, this cost a bit but the result is fine. No electronics other than ECU and some minor bits like ABS and pretty reliable. It will outlast me.
      - gruez 5y ago
        >Vote with your feet and move on Isn't the correct term "vote with your wallet"? "voting with your feet" implies switching jobs or emigrating.
        jacquesm 5y ago
        Walk out of one store and into another.
- jeffbee 5y ago
  On the other hand the IIHS says the MB C-Class has a fatality rate of zero, from 2015-2017, the latest data available. They must have done something right.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    I didn't die either. But I could have. Those bridge posts are the diameter of trees and at least as strong.
  - function_seven 5y ago
    That rate is for the 4WD version. The 2WD version has a fatality rate of 28. Now I'm going to assume that adding the 4WD option to your sedan isn't that good at increasing safety. Yeah, more driving wheels does improve control and will probably reduce fatalities. But from 28 dpm to 0 is going to also be attributable to statistical noise. (Case in point, IIHS' 2014 statistics have the 4WD version at 25, and the 2WD at 11). Also note that the death rate is in terms of deaths per million registration years and only includes the driver of the car. So for the C-Class, which sold about 80k units in 2014, one driver death in a 3-year span would be a '4' on the rate. The intervals on this data are very wide, and every year relatively low-volume cars will score a '0' just by statistical chance.
    - fredoralive 5y ago
      A factor to increase noise on the four wheel drive version of the C class is that 4WD saloons and estates[1] just aren't that common, it's a niche option for those types of car. Checking a UK second hand car sales site for a non scientific survey, it seems about 1 in 10 C classes for sale have the option (these ratios will probably differ between markets of course). [1] Or sedans and station wagons if you insist.
      - jeffbee 5y ago
        I don't know if that's really true in the U.S. where people have an irrational attraction to AWD. Looking at the pre-owned inventory of my nearest M-B dealer two thirds of it is 4Matic cars, only one third RWD.
- weaksauce 5y ago
  these systems remind me of when i think it was volvo put on a demo press event thing to promote their new auto-breaking systems and the car just straight up drove into the back of the semi truck under ideal conditions. either it was a thing to drum up some news stories under the "there is no such thing as bad press coverage" or they demoed it way before it was ready.
- jjtheblunt 5y ago
  which mercedes c class year? i had a 2008 and a 2010 w amg and they were awesome. i'm guessing you had some option I didn't opt for.
bob1029 5y ago
Why did we think it would be a good idea to stick a computer between the brake pedal and the physics equation? Passive systems like ABS are pretty much the only thing I have ever found value in, and even then it's been a mixed bag when operating near limits. Never heard of a car locking up on the freeway because an ABS fuse went out...
- riskable 5y ago
  > Why did we think it would be a good idea to stick a computer between the brake pedal and the physics equation? Because human beings have such a terrible track record that even "dumb" computers running code written by shabby programmers can do better. Even with these errors the computers are still doing a better job. The NIH studied Automatic Emergency Braking systems and found that, "With a 100% market penetration rate, fatalities could be reduced by 13.2%, and injuries could be reduced by 9.1%." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7037779/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7037779/
  - Wiseacre 5y ago
    That just underlines the problem of being so reliant on our death-prone cars in the first place.
    - tenuousemphasis 5y ago
      Yes, absolutely. Does that mean we shouldn't make them safer? Car manufacturers don't have a say in urban planning.
  - crims0n 5y ago
    When a human does something stupid, it's the humans fault. The human has to accept responsibility. When a computer does something stupid, who is to blame? How are they held accountable?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
pengaru 5y ago
Vehicles doing unpredictable things are simply broken. The 04 R1 I used to ride had a goofy double throttle system where the cable directly drove the first set of intake butterflies, but a duplicate set downstream was computer controlled via servo. This was the generation that introduced catalytic converters to bikes, and I presumed the intention was to limit throttle opening rates via computer overriding what the rider had done when opened too quickly. Conventionally that transient pressure drop situation is handled by throwing a bunch of excess fuel into the air stream to not hesitate and stumble from most the fuel falling out of suspension and clinging to the walls, i.e. they were cleaning up emissions. Even this seemingly benign and dead-stupid bit of a computer override almost caused me to crash on multiple occasions. If the rider opened the throttle aggressively far beyond where the servo operated throttle was at, and immediately began dialing it back to reduce the acceleration, the servo operated throttle would continue opening to meet the still more open cable operated throttle's position. So rider is telling bike to accelerate less, and bike is accelerating more in a game of computer catch up. This is not only very unexpected on a naturally aspirated ICE, but outright dangerous on a nearly 200HP sportbike. At least it was relatively trivial to remove the plates from the servo actuated throttle shaft and let the computer keep pointlessly twisting a bare shaft.
- rconti 5y ago
  Ugh. I had a bike that liked to stumble when cold, and it's exciting when leaned into a corner to leave the traffic lights and lose most of your power. These things are kind of important.
  - pengaru 5y ago
    Yeah that's problematic. A 500cc track bike I had came with primitive slide carburetors lacking any sort of accelerator pump by design. Cold or hot that thing would fall on its face if you were too ham-fisted with the throttle at low RPMs. But at least it was deterministic at this, and you quickly learned to not do that. On the track you're never down so low in RPMs so maybe it even made sense from a KISS perspective.
- function_seven 5y ago
Madmallard 5y ago
How is this allowed to happen? Cars doing something they literally should be designed not to do as a core basic requirement. It is like the technology is regressive.
elil17 5y ago
I will say that Hondas forward collision warning system never has a false negative. It saved me a fortune in insurance premiums by automatically breaking at the right time when I had to swerve out of the way of a oncoming car and almost rear ended a parked car. I hadn’t seen the parked car and would have put a real dent in it if it hadn’t stopped me. I do hope they solve the phantom breaking issue, but I hope it doesn’t neuter the collision avoidance system.
jiveturkey 5y ago
Every car I've owned, Honda, Toyota, Chevy, BMW, all have had false automatic braking events, not like every day but often enough. I always disable this feature if possible. Even when it beeps out of nowhere without braking, it /creates/ a dangerous situation. I think it still makes sense for the average US driver, who is quite bad and not attentive even when not on the phone. For the rest of us, this is a misfeature.
- bloodyplonker22 5y ago
  The only problem is that most people think that their driving skills are quite above average. Very few people think they are the "average US driver".
asteroidp 5y ago
I would love to see the breakdown by age. When it was Toyotas fictitious problem it came down to a bunch of old people. People that shouldn't even have a license
- bdcravens 5y ago
  I had a 2018 Accord for about 7 months. I had it happen a couple of times; I was only 41 at the time.
- PhantomGremlin 5y ago
  When it was Toyotas fictitious problem it came down to a bunch of old people. Yeah, right. Blame it on "old people". Certainly not the code base with 10,000 global variables: The design review found things like: Other egregious deviations from standard practice were the number of global variables in the system. (A variable is a location in memory that has a number in it. A global variable is any piece of software anywhere in the system can get to that number and read it or write it.) The academic standard is zero. Toyota had more than 10,000 global variables. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19613055 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19613055 That original link is now broken. I don't think Toyota paid to scrub it, probably just decay.
- niij 5y ago
  Anecdote: I had a '19 Accord. I'm not an old person and experienced this a good dozen times over the 18 months I owned it. I sold it primarily due to this issue.
lightlyused 5y ago
I have a 2017 crv and do notice that it has some edge cases in the collision avoidance system. Usually this is when changing lanes along a curve and there is a wall it will sometimes active for a moment or in a curve and I'm a few feet back from a person in the other lane it seems to detect that has being in front and triggers the warning. Only once have I had it forcibly try and stop, and that was with good reason. Otherwise, I've been very satisfied with the crv in general.
PopGreene 5y ago
This happened to my shortly after I bought a 2018 Accord. I'm on the interstate in the fast lane with a pickup off my front quarter. There had been construction in the area recently and they hadn't cleaned up the lane shift markings adequately. The car flashed a "lane departure" warning immediately followed by "BRAKE" and stood the car up on the front wheels for about one second. I would guess the car detected the diagonal line across my lane and thought I was going to steer into the truck. It's probably a bug that it didn't give priority to the lane markings it was already following. A lady from Honda called me a few days later to ask how I liked my new car. I talked to her about this and she told me I should contact the city to tell them to clean up the construction markings. I suppose she was trying to shift blame and liability off of Honda.
ohcomments 5y ago
My Merc also does this type of shenanigans... Like see's walls where's nothing and brakes on that side to call my attention but instead it just scares me to death and sometimes it does this on the highway!!! Also, sometimes while turning the wheel going left, like getting into a different road it just beeps like I'm hitting a wall. Had a 2015 Accord that I had to sell due to... Reasons and boy di I miss that car... Never had any issues with that one fortunately
throwawayboise 5y ago
Well, yet another card on the deck of reasons I will only buy older cars without all of this technology.
king_magic 5y ago
Wow, this happens in my '22 Pilot nearly every day. Glad I'm not the only one annoyed/concerned about it.
vba616 5y ago
I have a 2021 Honda and have had no problem with the auto braking, so I'm going to assume that either the cars affected have a specific defect from the factory or something specific has broken. To all appearances, the way it is set up on my car is designed to prevent phantom braking and does so. The big orange warning flashes occasionally when there is a large speed difference compared to the car ahead. This can happen on an off ramp, or when a car ahead is turning right. In these cases, it's never braked on its own, and it seems likely that it would only brake to mitigate a collision rather than avoiding one. This, to me, is a reasonable tradeoff that surely is by design. When using the adaptive cruise control, it once or twice (in well over a year) has reacted to a car in the wrong lane, for instance, on a three lane highway it detected the vehicle in the left lane momentarily and slowed slightly. But it didn't panic brake, and it's very rare that it has an issue with lanes, even on sweeping curves. The only time it has actually panic braked was when someone ahead of me slowed to turn right, and I was startled and hit the brake and it assisted so as to brake much harder. It seems like it was activated only when I hit the brakes and only because of the velocity/abruptness of the pedal movement, which is exactly what it's intended to do (may be classified separately as brake assist). I didn't need to brake that hard, but I wasn't rear ended so... The final glitch I've had is that when driving in heavy snow/sleet/rain the radar stops working when gunk covers the sensor. This has only happened once and when it happened, it only shut off the adaptive cruise control without doing anything else undesirable. It's not clear to me if there is some reason there isn't a smooth cover to prevent accumulation. Sometimes incredibly weird electrical glitches can arise from somewhere that the average service place will not find or even really look for. I had a different car (not a Honda) that was about 6 years old, no visible rust, and seemed afflicted by electrical gremlins. It turned out that due to poor design of the taillights, water had collected in them, and the exposed wiring had corroded to where it looked like it had been at the bottom of the ocean. I only found out because one taillight finally stopped working at all. But it was a lesson on how simple damage to wiring can be hard to diagnose, because inconsistent voltage or whatever scrambles the computers. In theory, that car had a built in diagnostic function to warn a taillight was out. But it never registered at all. I expect a Japanese car to not have problems like this until 200,000 miles in the rust belt. But everybody tends to rest on their laurels.
emrah 5y ago
Yes I have one of the possibly affected vehicles and I concur the anti-collision system is too sensitive. I usually disable it when I drive. It's extremely annoying that there is no way to disable it permanently though (it gets re-enabled when the car is restarted) It's a huge PITA that these systems work most of the time but have glitches occasionally which are completely unpredictable and distracting. That's unacceptable imo. I'd rather not have it at all

103 points by qualudeheart 5y ago

Not a lot of details. Why only accord and cr-v? My Clarity reliably slams on the brakes if I pass over a certain spot on CA-24 in Oakland with the ACS engaged. And the FCWS freaks out at low speeds frequently. Almost certainly the same hardware that’s on an accord.

ericbarrett 5y ago
Might just be statistics; the Accord and CR-V are very popular. You should report those issues: https://www.nhtsa.gov/report-a-safety-problem#index https://www.nhtsa.gov/report-a-safety-problem#index
bdcravens 5y ago
Perhaps they have had the full safety suite longer than other models?

jacquesm 5y ago

I got rid of a Mercedes C class for this exact same reason, it tried to kill me - twice - and that was enough for me. No more automatic brakes on my cars, the risks don't seem to outweigh the advantages. At least Honda seems to be responsible enough to address this. According to MB there was absolutely nothing wrong with my car, it was 'operating as designed'.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
3pt14159 5y ago
Yikes. I remember when my dad bought the first fly-by-wire car and even back then I was kinda spooked by it but accepted that adults knew what they were doing. The funny thing is that our next door neighbour bought the same car and the computer saved his life when a semi-transport truck merged into him and it took over the wheel. I'm still on team "put computers into cars" for the long term benefit of ending routine automotive collisions but the medium term is frightening.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  If not for many years of pingpong I probably would have smashed into a bridge support. Crap car. The situation is a bridge with two steel supports rising up with a 2 ton weight on top to lift the bridge, apparently the radar return of the posts is such that the radar interprets it as an imminent frontal collision if you pass between the two posts. And then immediately hits the brakes, hard. Second time was in a bend, with a big sign on the far side of the bend (me on the inner lane). Same stuff. If there had been oncoming traffic I would have certainly hit it because the car became uncontrollable instantly.
  - 3pt14159 5y ago
    Wow that is bonkers. Do you think Musk is right about the audiovisual-only approach to self-driving automotives? I must say I rarely disagree with his thinking when it comes to physics and computer science, but that was one of the few times I thought he was wrong and I'm still not sure, but your story does make for a compelling piece of evidence.
    - mjevans 5y ago
      If we had Scifi style millimeter wave radar (I'm thinking 'Snow Crash' (book) style stuff) that gave the computer a surface shape and 'signature' model to think about? That'd probably be the safest since it's better than human vision ever could be, though it'd still be tough since humans are analog supercomputers that are well versed in traversing 3.5 dimensions of space and the advanced memory and hazard prediction elements really help. Vision based computer systems really need the persistence and object recognition factors. A strong specialized faked intelligence might be sufficient, more so if it's less distracted than humans.
      - the__alchemist 5y ago
        I'd love to see something like Knight Visions. Even if it were just an IR overlay, in a way that looked natural, and was smaller/lighter/better FOV than traditional NVGs. The mm-wave part would be great too!
blueprint 5y ago
Mercedes treated me similarly. I had a brand new sprinter van. The power braking fluid lines exploded just after I got off the highway. I got extremely lucky it didn't happen 5 seconds earlier than it did. Turns out they use plastic rings instead of metal ones and it turns out it happens to lots of people. They refused to buy back the vehicle. I wanted to sue them but I've got too much stuff on my plate, or so I tell myself. Needless to say, I lost a lot of trust in them and (perhaps stupidly) sold the van shortly afterwards.
- unfocussed_mike 5y ago
  > Needless to say, I lost a lot of trust in them and (perhaps stupidly) sold the van shortly afterwards. I know this is very off-topic but don't beat yourself up about making quick decisions like this that cut that kind of persistent, simmering rage out of your life. We have enough of this stuff with people in our lives, often unavoidably, so letting appliances/devices/products cause it is not something we have to tolerate. If a _thing_ makes you feel unsatisfiable anger, get rid of it.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    Very good advice. Vote with your feet and move on. Life really is too short, if MB wants to burn their brand more power to them. I bought a 25 year old car and had it rebuilt end-to-end, this cost a bit but the result is fine. No electronics other than ECU and some minor bits like ABS and pretty reliable. It will outlast me.
    - gruez 5y ago
      >Vote with your feet and move on Isn't the correct term "vote with your wallet"? "voting with your feet" implies switching jobs or emigrating.
      - jacquesm 5y ago
        Walk out of one store and into another.
jeffbee 5y ago
On the other hand the IIHS says the MB C-Class has a fatality rate of zero, from 2015-2017, the latest data available. They must have done something right.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  I didn't die either. But I could have. Those bridge posts are the diameter of trees and at least as strong.
- function_seven 5y ago
  That rate is for the 4WD version. The 2WD version has a fatality rate of 28. Now I'm going to assume that adding the 4WD option to your sedan isn't that good at increasing safety. Yeah, more driving wheels does improve control and will probably reduce fatalities. But from 28 dpm to 0 is going to also be attributable to statistical noise. (Case in point, IIHS' 2014 statistics have the 4WD version at 25, and the 2WD at 11). Also note that the death rate is in terms of deaths per million registration years and only includes the driver of the car. So for the C-Class, which sold about 80k units in 2014, one driver death in a 3-year span would be a '4' on the rate. The intervals on this data are very wide, and every year relatively low-volume cars will score a '0' just by statistical chance.
  - fredoralive 5y ago
    A factor to increase noise on the four wheel drive version of the C class is that 4WD saloons and estates[1] just aren't that common, it's a niche option for those types of car. Checking a UK second hand car sales site for a non scientific survey, it seems about 1 in 10 C classes for sale have the option (these ratios will probably differ between markets of course). [1] Or sedans and station wagons if you insist.
    - jeffbee 5y ago
      I don't know if that's really true in the U.S. where people have an irrational attraction to AWD. Looking at the pre-owned inventory of my nearest M-B dealer two thirds of it is 4Matic cars, only one third RWD.
weaksauce 5y ago
these systems remind me of when i think it was volvo put on a demo press event thing to promote their new auto-breaking systems and the car just straight up drove into the back of the semi truck under ideal conditions. either it was a thing to drum up some news stories under the "there is no such thing as bad press coverage" or they demoed it way before it was ready.
jjtheblunt 5y ago
which mercedes c class year? i had a 2008 and a 2010 w amg and they were awesome. i'm guessing you had some option I didn't opt for.

bob1029 5y ago

Why did we think it would be a good idea to stick a computer between the brake pedal and the physics equation? Passive systems like ABS are pretty much the only thing I have ever found value in, and even then it's been a mixed bag when operating near limits. Never heard of a car locking up on the freeway because an ABS fuse went out...

riskable 5y ago
> Why did we think it would be a good idea to stick a computer between the brake pedal and the physics equation? Because human beings have such a terrible track record that even "dumb" computers running code written by shabby programmers can do better. Even with these errors the computers are still doing a better job. The NIH studied Automatic Emergency Braking systems and found that, "With a 100% market penetration rate, fatalities could be reduced by 13.2%, and injuries could be reduced by 9.1%." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7037779/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7037779/
- Wiseacre 5y ago
  That just underlines the problem of being so reliant on our death-prone cars in the first place.
  - tenuousemphasis 5y ago
    Yes, absolutely. Does that mean we shouldn't make them safer? Car manufacturers don't have a say in urban planning.
- crims0n 5y ago
  When a human does something stupid, it's the humans fault. The human has to accept responsibility. When a computer does something stupid, who is to blame? How are they held accountable?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

pengaru 5y ago

Vehicles doing unpredictable things are simply broken. The 04 R1 I used to ride had a goofy double throttle system where the cable directly drove the first set of intake butterflies, but a duplicate set downstream was computer controlled via servo. This was the generation that introduced catalytic converters to bikes, and I presumed the intention was to limit throttle opening rates via computer overriding what the rider had done when opened too quickly. Conventionally that transient pressure drop situation is handled by throwing a bunch of excess fuel into the air stream to not hesitate and stumble from most the fuel falling out of suspension and clinging to the walls, i.e. they were cleaning up emissions. Even this seemingly benign and dead-stupid bit of a computer override almost caused me to crash on multiple occasions. If the rider opened the throttle aggressively far beyond where the servo operated throttle was at, and immediately began dialing it back to reduce the acceleration, the servo operated throttle would continue opening to meet the still more open cable operated throttle's position. So rider is telling bike to accelerate less, and bike is accelerating more in a game of computer catch up. This is not only very unexpected on a naturally aspirated ICE, but outright dangerous on a nearly 200HP sportbike. At least it was relatively trivial to remove the plates from the servo actuated throttle shaft and let the computer keep pointlessly twisting a bare shaft.

rconti 5y ago
Ugh. I had a bike that liked to stumble when cold, and it's exciting when leaned into a corner to leave the traffic lights and lose most of your power. These things are kind of important.
- pengaru 5y ago
  Yeah that's problematic. A 500cc track bike I had came with primitive slide carburetors lacking any sort of accelerator pump by design. Cold or hot that thing would fall on its face if you were too ham-fisted with the throttle at low RPMs. But at least it was deterministic at this, and you quickly learned to not do that. On the track you're never down so low in RPMs so maybe it even made sense from a KISS perspective.
function_seven 5y ago

Madmallard 5y ago

How is this allowed to happen? Cars doing something they literally should be designed not to do as a core basic requirement. It is like the technology is regressive.

elil17 5y ago

I will say that Hondas forward collision warning system never has a false negative. It saved me a fortune in insurance premiums by automatically breaking at the right time when I had to swerve out of the way of a oncoming car and almost rear ended a parked car. I hadn’t seen the parked car and would have put a real dent in it if it hadn’t stopped me. I do hope they solve the phantom breaking issue, but I hope it doesn’t neuter the collision avoidance system.

jiveturkey 5y ago

Every car I've owned, Honda, Toyota, Chevy, BMW, all have had false automatic braking events, not like every day but often enough. I always disable this feature if possible. Even when it beeps out of nowhere without braking, it /creates/ a dangerous situation. I think it still makes sense for the average US driver, who is quite bad and not attentive even when not on the phone. For the rest of us, this is a misfeature.

bloodyplonker22 5y ago
The only problem is that most people think that their driving skills are quite above average. Very few people think they are the "average US driver".

asteroidp 5y ago

I would love to see the breakdown by age. When it was Toyotas fictitious problem it came down to a bunch of old people. People that shouldn't even have a license

bdcravens 5y ago
I had a 2018 Accord for about 7 months. I had it happen a couple of times; I was only 41 at the time.
PhantomGremlin 5y ago
When it was Toyotas fictitious problem it came down to a bunch of old people. Yeah, right. Blame it on "old people". Certainly not the code base with 10,000 global variables: The design review found things like: Other egregious deviations from standard practice were the number of global variables in the system. (A variable is a location in memory that has a number in it. A global variable is any piece of software anywhere in the system can get to that number and read it or write it.) The academic standard is zero. Toyota had more than 10,000 global variables. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19613055 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19613055 That original link is now broken. I don't think Toyota paid to scrub it, probably just decay.
niij 5y ago
Anecdote: I had a '19 Accord. I'm not an old person and experienced this a good dozen times over the 18 months I owned it. I sold it primarily due to this issue.

lightlyused 5y ago

I have a 2017 crv and do notice that it has some edge cases in the collision avoidance system. Usually this is when changing lanes along a curve and there is a wall it will sometimes active for a moment or in a curve and I'm a few feet back from a person in the other lane it seems to detect that has being in front and triggers the warning. Only once have I had it forcibly try and stop, and that was with good reason. Otherwise, I've been very satisfied with the crv in general.

PopGreene 5y ago

This happened to my shortly after I bought a 2018 Accord. I'm on the interstate in the fast lane with a pickup off my front quarter. There had been construction in the area recently and they hadn't cleaned up the lane shift markings adequately. The car flashed a "lane departure" warning immediately followed by "BRAKE" and stood the car up on the front wheels for about one second. I would guess the car detected the diagonal line across my lane and thought I was going to steer into the truck. It's probably a bug that it didn't give priority to the lane markings it was already following. A lady from Honda called me a few days later to ask how I liked my new car. I talked to her about this and she told me I should contact the city to tell them to clean up the construction markings. I suppose she was trying to shift blame and liability off of Honda.

ohcomments 5y ago

My Merc also does this type of shenanigans... Like see's walls where's nothing and brakes on that side to call my attention but instead it just scares me to death and sometimes it does this on the highway!!! Also, sometimes while turning the wheel going left, like getting into a different road it just beeps like I'm hitting a wall. Had a 2015 Accord that I had to sell due to... Reasons and boy di I miss that car... Never had any issues with that one fortunately

throwawayboise 5y ago

Well, yet another card on the deck of reasons I will only buy older cars without all of this technology.

king_magic 5y ago

Wow, this happens in my '22 Pilot nearly every day. Glad I'm not the only one annoyed/concerned about it.

vba616 5y ago

I have a 2021 Honda and have had no problem with the auto braking, so I'm going to assume that either the cars affected have a specific defect from the factory or something specific has broken. To all appearances, the way it is set up on my car is designed to prevent phantom braking and does so. The big orange warning flashes occasionally when there is a large speed difference compared to the car ahead. This can happen on an off ramp, or when a car ahead is turning right. In these cases, it's never braked on its own, and it seems likely that it would only brake to mitigate a collision rather than avoiding one. This, to me, is a reasonable tradeoff that surely is by design. When using the adaptive cruise control, it once or twice (in well over a year) has reacted to a car in the wrong lane, for instance, on a three lane highway it detected the vehicle in the left lane momentarily and slowed slightly. But it didn't panic brake, and it's very rare that it has an issue with lanes, even on sweeping curves. The only time it has actually panic braked was when someone ahead of me slowed to turn right, and I was startled and hit the brake and it assisted so as to brake much harder. It seems like it was activated only when I hit the brakes and only because of the velocity/abruptness of the pedal movement, which is exactly what it's intended to do (may be classified separately as brake assist). I didn't need to brake that hard, but I wasn't rear ended so... The final glitch I've had is that when driving in heavy snow/sleet/rain the radar stops working when gunk covers the sensor. This has only happened once and when it happened, it only shut off the adaptive cruise control without doing anything else undesirable. It's not clear to me if there is some reason there isn't a smooth cover to prevent accumulation. Sometimes incredibly weird electrical glitches can arise from somewhere that the average service place will not find or even really look for. I had a different car (not a Honda) that was about 6 years old, no visible rust, and seemed afflicted by electrical gremlins. It turned out that due to poor design of the taillights, water had collected in them, and the exposed wiring had corroded to where it looked like it had been at the bottom of the ocean. I only found out because one taillight finally stopped working at all. But it was a lesson on how simple damage to wiring can be hard to diagnose, because inconsistent voltage or whatever scrambles the computers. In theory, that car had a built in diagnostic function to warn a taillight was out. But it never registered at all. I expect a Japanese car to not have problems like this until 200,000 miles in the rust belt. But everybody tends to rest on their laurels.

emrah 5y ago

Yes I have one of the possibly affected vehicles and I concur the anti-collision system is too sensitive. I usually disable it when I drive. It's extremely annoying that there is no way to disable it permanently though (it gets re-enabled when the car is restarted) It's a huge PITA that these systems work most of the time but have glitches occasionally which are completely unpredictable and distracting. That's unacceptable imo. I'd rather not have it at all