Honda Collision Mitigation Braking System false positives allegedly cause accidents
Honda's Collision Mitigation Braking System (CMBS) allegedly triggered sudden, unexpected braking without obstacles. This "phantom braking" resulted in numerous consumer complaints and a NHTSA investigation.
Records by entity: Honda
Honda's CMBS suffered from phantom braking, where the AI misidentified objects and triggered sudden stops, leading to accidents.
The CMBS misrecognizes objects and applies hard braking when there is no collision risk.
Key facts
- What
- Honda's Collision Mitigation Braking System (CMBS) allegedly triggered sudden, unexpected braking without obstacles.
- Incident date
- Sep 1, 2022
- Who
- Honda
- Failure mode
- Agentic Action Error
- AI surface
- Autonomous System
- Severity
- High
What happened
Honda's Collision Mitigation Braking System (CMBS) allegedly experienced false positive activations, causing vehicles to brake suddenly without cause. These incidents reportedly led to collisions and injuries for customers. The NHTSA upgraded its probe into the issue following over 1,000 consumer complaints.
What broke inside the model
The system's computer vision model allegedly misrecognizes non-threatening objects or patterns as collision risks. This perception error triggers the automated emergency braking mechanism inappropriately. The system relies on a windshield-mounted camera for object detection.
What it cost
Sources
- PressNHTSA Upgrades Probe of Honda Accord and CR-V Emergency Braking Investigationcaranddriver.com
- PressHonda Phantom Braking Lawsuit Heads to Trialthebrakereport.com
- PressNHTSA Upgrades Probe of Possible Honda E-Brake Defectinjuryrelief.com
Cite this entry
https://failureindex.ai/failures/honda-collision-mitigation-braking-false-positivesAI Failure Index. "Honda Collision Mitigation Braking System false positives allegedly cause accidents" (FI-0694). Realm Labs. https://failureindex.ai/failures/honda-collision-mitigation-braking-false-positives (indexed Jun 22, 2026).Data fields CC-BY 4.0, prose citation permitted. Incident ID FI-0694. Full dataset at /data.
Note from Realm Labs, the Index steward
How Realm fits
- Prism
- OmniGuard
- AgentRealm
This entry sits in the index's predictive wing: a system that scores, ranks, perceives, or steers rather than generates. Realm's runtime layer is built for the generative and agentic systems now moving into these same decision seats, where it watches a model's internal state and holds an unsupported claim or an unchecked action before it commits. The control gap on this record, an automated decision that reached people with no runtime check in front of it, is the same gap. The index keeps predictive failures on the record because the pattern carries straight into the systems shipping today.