[Ykanti]

Curious if other Accord owners are experiencing their cars being "fooled" occasionally. Here is short list of things (in highest importance/concern order) I have noticed in the 1.5 months I have owned my 2018 Accord Hybrid Touring...


1) Had my first "car decided that it needed to hit the brakes when I thought that was exactly the WRONG thing to do for the situation" last night. It was on a 2 lane highway where speed limit changes from 55 to 65, car ahead in right lane pulling a large trailer at night on wet road only going about 45 with me and another vehicle nearly side by side coming up on the slow mover who is also not completely staying in the lane (trailer wheels on the white line at times but still plenty of lane). I sped up to make sure that I would get past the slow guy in the right lane because I didn't want to be competing with other car who I suspected would also want to pass the sluggish moving vehicle. Just as I'm about to pass the car beeps and the orange rectangle of death comes on and I go from accelerating to decelerating which of course throws off the car that had been near me and assumed I was passing and he could get in the left lane to pass also. The car acted like it was a kid in driver's ed - oh, there's something coming closer to me, I better slam on the brakes without thinking about other cars in the situation. I steered further left (used more of the left shoulder than I'd like to) and continued to accelerate and within a couple of seconds it allowed me to speed up to get around the obstacle. My son had warned me that he turned off his "avoidance" options on his Clarity because of similar situations (he drives in Bay Area traffic regularly, I am out in the sticks 97% of the time). Potentially a big problem/scare.



2) Lane Keeping Assist seems to get confused by highway/freeway off ramps and any time lanes either get added or subtracted to the current roadway. For example, driving along the highway when an off ramp caused the white line on the right side of the road to veer, the car seems to panic for a split second, sometimes with the lane departure light or an LKAS lane figure coming on orange in the heads up display. Where the highway goes from 2 lanes to 3 temporarily (to allow traffic coming in from a left side entrance), there are similar problems both when the lane widens before it is split by a new dotted white line, and then again when they merge further down the road because people entering would have enough time to get up to highway speeds by then. A mid-sized annoyance/scare.


3) Any traffic sign with numbers on it makes the car think that's the current speed limit. "Trucks 55" on a 70 MPH road make the car suggest the limit is 55 for me; "School zone 25 when children present" make it think it's 25 even at 11pm. Obviously a minor inconvenience, but really how hard is it to update software to be checking for these VERY common signs - I get that temporary (e.g. some of the things that are put up in construction zones) and uncommon sign configurations might fool it.


Wondering what y'all have seen/experienced; these and/or other concerns that I may not have yet but should watch for... Thanks.

 

[Keyboard]

My only concern is when the car is fooled into suddenly slamming on the brakes when cars are behind me. That could create an ugly outcome. Other than that, all other sensing miscalculations and warnings I can deal with.

The one miscalculation I enjoy is when I'm on Route 100 whose speed limit is 55 MPH. The system mistakes the route sign for a speed limit sign and displays the speed limit as 100 MPH in my HUD. I chuckle every time!

 

[Lippman]

I have the same thing with adaptive cruise control on and a vehicle in front of me goes into the turning lane and my vehicle just about stops even after the other vehicle is in the turning lane, luckily there hasn't been any cars very close to my rear end or I would have been hit. Complained to dealer and they took it for a test drive and said they couldn't duplicate the situation.

 

[Rick Grahn]

I have the same thing with adaptive cruise control on and a vehicle in front of me goes into the turning lane and my vehicle just about stops even after the other vehicle is in the turning lane, luckily there hasn't been any cars very close to my rear end or I would have been hit. Complained to dealer and they took it for a test drive and said they couldn't duplicate the situation.

Oh my. This happened to me yesterday. I thought i had imagined it.

 

[tarheelz]

I have the same thing with adaptive cruise control on and a vehicle in front of me goes into the turning lane and my vehicle just about stops even after the other vehicle is in the turning lane, luckily there hasn't been any cars very close to my rear end or I would have been hit. Complained to dealer and they took it for a test drive and said they couldn't duplicate the situation.

ACC could have been a great feature but the minimum follow distance is too far for modern, urban interstate travel. At minimum follow distance, other cars will regularly move into the separation space causing the ACC system to slam on the brakes. It's laughably impractical for the real world.

 

[KurtCira]

I have experienced everything mentioned here.

I now use regular cruise control mode instead of ACC except on long empty stretches of interstate and rare times in stop and go traffic jams. Using regular cruise improved my mileage because I can manually hold a more steady speed instead of roboticly following the car ahead. And even if using manual cruise, the collision avoidance system will still occasionally slam on the brakes at the worst possible moments, such as if accelerating to get a run to pass a car ahead on a two lane road to slingshot around after an approaching car passes. Get too close and it is full brakes when I want full throttle.

I stopped using lane departure warning to eliminate the car jerking the wheel when confused at off ramp lane markings. If I am using Lane Keep Assist I now turn it off temporarily with the steering wheel button when I see a road striping issue that might trigger an inappropriate response.

I've had the car sound an "approaching object" warning alarm when stopped at lights numerous times when nothing was approaching. I discovered that if I turn off parking assist, except when parking, I do not get these annoying alarms.

I hope Honda will be able to fix or reduce some of these, hopefully with just software updates.

 

[dansbenzo]

I turn all that **** off.

 

[Keyboard]

I turn all that **** off.

It's not that drastic. Except for the possibility of the ACC slamming on brakes, all the rest of the Honda Sensing suite is pretty harmless IMO. So, I have everything on, including the parking sensors.

I rarely get false alarms, and when I do I actually get a kick out of it. For example, while sitting at a light I might get a false warning that a vehicle is approaching from the left or right, even though everyone around me is at a dead stop. I haven't figured out what triggers it, but it forces me to look around. Or, when the LKAS jiggles my steering wheel I yell (mentally) "Calm down ... I got this!".

 

[MSMV1]

in my experience, (what I think is happening anyway):

Lane Departure Mitigation seems to hit the brakes as well when it thinks I'm going off the road. I have detection set to wide already.

It has happened in the wrong scenarios a few times for me and I have turned Lane Departure Mitigation off but I use Lane Keep Assist very often. It doesn't hit the brakes and if it gets annoying, it can be turned off quickly.


I've had Collision Avoidance hit the brakes as I was pulling into a parking lot because there was a brick sign at the entrance. :sad:
And, I have also had the brakes applied as I'm merging into a lane from another lane. It's reasonable to think that maybe that particular action is not the safest though. Maybe I should adjust my driving a bit.

Speed limit sign misreadings are a little too frequent and I'd like to see a GPS based option for that. It would be great if the speed limit and warning from Waze could be displayed in the HUD! It's not entirely perfect, but it's pretty close!

I've been okay with Blind Spot Monitoring and I suspect that the Cross Traffic warning is using the same BSM sensors as opposed to the parking sensors. The Parking Sensor warnings in traffic are interesting. It seems to be a conflict with Ford's parking sensors and a few other brands.

 

[BuickNut]

It is hard to have the sensitivity that is good for all occasions. I noticed LKAS gets confused around tar strips. I also have seen ACC react to voids in between tractor-trailers rear wheels when passing by slamming on the brakes momentarily.

 

[KurtCira]

I have found that turning off the parking sensor with the switch on the lower left side of the dash has eliminated the "approaching object" warning at stop lights.

 

[fearnight]

ACC works beautifully on a 2 lane road 45-55mph limit. The sensors don't seem to get confused and the follow distance is great.

On the interstate at speeds of 70-80mph, it's borderline unusable in moderate traffic. For one, the follow distance even on the closest setting is somewhere around 40 yards. Guys, that is something like 6 car lengths. This generous amount of room means other drivers will gladly fill in this gap with their own vehicle. This results in your car slamming on the brakes to maintain the 40 yard follow distance. I can only imagine the people behind us cussing and slamming on their steering wheels at us.

On the interstate, I've also had issues passing other cars. Say I have ACC set to 75mph and I'm passing a car in the right lane going 70mph. The car will sometimes apply the brakes as if I'm about to collide into their car, despite my lane being completely clear. I have to deactivate ACC or just jam on the throttle to get around them. This only happens a small percentage of the time, though.

I've also had the Lane Mitigation almost go into full ABS lock it was braking so hard before because there was a lane switch due to construction. The old lines were still in place so it thought I ran off the road completely. I turned LMBS to "Warning only" after that.


But all that being said, I do enjoy the Honda Sense technology overall. CMBS in particular has saved me from having to do an emergency stop a few times.

 

[AshleyDraz]

My 2019 touring gets fooled by my bushes every morning. I have shrubbery on both sides of the mouth of my driveway and every day when I am leaving, the trigger the sensors that there is something approaching. Yeah, it's a Bush. The same Bush as yesterday. ?

 

[Brian McCartan]

My 2019 touring gets fooled by my bushes every morning. I have shrubbery on both sides of the mouth of my driveway and every day when I am leaving, the trigger the sensors that there is something approaching. Yeah, it's a Bush. The same Bush as yesterday. ?

Ashley, you are driving a 2019 Honda Accord Hybrid Touring that you paid around $35,000 out the door for.
This is not a Tesla.
It wont distinguish a lot of things, but it will warn you there is something there.
A ton of amazing tech in this machine for the money paid.
When I back out it always warns me about the edge of the door being too close to the car, it's ok with me.

Glad to see you on the forum.
We need some new input.

Looking forward to your posts.

 

[Ghawkins]

Over short abrupt hills the BRAKE light flashes because it assumes the hill ahead is an object in the road. The same applies to very sharp turns, but you would probably be braking anyway for the turn.

 

[node808]

ACC Problems

ACC is horrible in heavy traffic. Lane changes with ACC on will hit the brakes hard during lane changes and it will also tap the brakes while passing other vehicles on mulitlane highways. Sunlight causes problems sometimes too.

 

[long_road]

I turn all that **** off.

Ditto. The first time my car slammed on the brakes while cruising at 75mph on the highway because the car in front of me exited the off-ramp, I decided it was time to disable...

 

[gn842]

LKAS seems to me to be something to turn off for urban driving, both urban stop n go with lights and urban freeway. The ACC is reasonable but often I hover my foot over the pedal because it sometimes does not brake soon enough (I have the distance on average, don't want too close or too far).

A lot of this stuff seems to me to be very good for having on long trips when you can get lazy or inattentive.

My girlfriend's brand new (2020 LE premium option) Corolla has a more aggressive LKAS than does the Accord. I found it annoying. Don't know if it can be turned off. Bad enough learning controls for the Accord and now I have to do same for Corolla. (Hers was a planned purchase, my previous 2014 Accord was murdered in May, but the result is we have two new vehicles and are complete noobs with all this electronic kuhrap).

The most dramatic "intervention" of the safety system so far is when I was in a two lanes turning left situation. Two left turn lanes side by side feeding into a two lane road. So the turning cars are in parallel and arc to the left. Now if you think about it you can see that the car to your right which is also turning to the left can in effect cross in front of you. That doesn't matter, because you're not moving straight ahead. Your wheels are turned to left and if neither of you did anything you would executed a perfectly parallel movement from the left turn lane to the new street.

Well when the car to my right crossed in front safety system hit my brakes hard. You can see how it would be hard to distinguish this move from, for example, someone running through a stop sign in a four way intersection where you are turning left. The danger of the sudden stop comes in its unexpectedness, it is possible that the car in back of you won't have time to react.

So I think as drivers we need to pay attention to these kinds of automated behaviors and we should talk to other people about them. It's not just about learning what we should do. It's helping people understand how these cars behave differently from what our experience leads us to expect, if you're in an older car you need to know what the newer cars are up to.

Greg N

p.s. on another note the Corolla is smooth as silk and it has secondary port fuel injection, so no worries about valve carbon build up. I'm a bit worried about how our Accords are going to age.

 

[gn842]

ACC works beautifully on a 2 lane road 45-55mph limit. The sensors don't seem to get confused and the follow distance is great.

On the interstate at speeds of 70-80mph, it's borderline unusable in moderate traffic. For one, the follow distance even on the closest setting is somewhere around 40 yards. Guys, that is something like 6 car lengths. This generous amount of room means other drivers will gladly fill in this gap with their own vehicle. This results in your car slamming on the brakes to maintain the 40 yard follow distance. I can only imagine the people behind us cussing and slamming on their steering wheels at us.

I loved your whole post, very accurate and observant. But the observation you make above is just 100% dead on. I just posted my own nearly identical observation in a more recent thread. Greg N

 

[Vegashybrid]

ACC could have been a great feature but the minimum follow distance is too far for modern, urban interstate travel. At minimum follow distance, other cars will regularly move into the separation space causing the ACC system to slam on the brakes. It's laughably impractical for the real world.

ACC Problems

ACC is horrible in heavy traffic. Lane changes with ACC on will hit the brakes hard during lane changes and it will also tap the brakes while passing other vehicles on mulitlane highways. Sunlight causes problems sometimes too.

Ditto. The first time my car slammed on the brakes while cruising at 75mph on the highway because the car in front of me exited the off-ramp, I decided it was time to disable...

So let me get this straight. Everybody is using this feature for something that it's not intended for and then complaining it doesn't work? Let me get this out of the way: THERE ARE NO SELF DRIVING VEHICLES YET! No not even Tesla! Does absolutely no one read the news about autopilot crashes ect? Did no one read the manual or have the dealership properly explain to them how the vehicle works? Per the manual:
"Use ACC ONLY when traveling on open highways in good weather."
Not in traffic, not in normal freeway driving. It's meant for driving cross country drives to lessen fatigue from hours of driving! Stop using these systems for something they are not meant for and making the roads unsafe for you and everyone else.