NHTSA wants more info from Honda in probe of 1.7M vehicles for alleged unintended braking

Honda has right until Aug. 12 to answer, or it could encounter civil penalties of up to around $122 million.

In a assertion to Automotive News, Honda spokesman Chris Martin reiterated that the automaker is mindful of the investigation and committed to safety.

“Honda will cooperate with the NHTSA by means of the investigation procedure, and we will keep on our very own internal overview of the out there information,” Martin said.

In addition, NHTSA wants to know of any issues or lawsuits related to the alleged defect as properly as stories involving a crash, harm or dying. It also would like to know how several vehicles are outfitted with the AEB technique and any regarded procedure overall performance dissimilarities amongst the autos protected in the details request.

More particularly, NHTSA desires to know at which speeds each individual of the systems’ sensors can cause a braking party, how Honda’s Sensing and AcuraWatch advanced driver-assistance systems interact with other driver-help features and any recognised environmental factors these types of as time of day, glare from the sun, weather conditions or other street objects that may perhaps have an affect on the system’s overall performance.

NHTSA’s details ask for will come as the company prepares to problem a proposal to call for AEB, like pedestrian detection, on all new gentle-duty vehicles and set bare minimum efficiency expectations, as mandated in the infrastructure regulation passed by Congress final calendar year.

This thirty day period, NHTSA reported it has acquired experiences of almost 400 crashes involving driver-support systems and 130 crashes involving thoroughly automatic cars given that it started requiring automakers, suppliers and tech providers to disclose the facts very last June.

Tesla Inc. and Honda documented the most ADAS crashes to the company — 273 and 90, respectively — according to the knowledge, which is minimal and lacks context required for comparison.

The company, also in February, opened an investigation into specified Tesla Product 3 and Product Y cars equipped with Autopilot alleging “phantom braking” right after getting 354 complaints.

NHTSA this thirty day period stated the amount of reports of surprising brake activation in those people cars experienced elevated to 758.