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.
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
- Hallucination
- 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
- 01 · TriggerA user asks for a fact, a citation, or a figure.
- 02 · Model stepThe model writes a fluent, confident answer.
- 03 · Control gapNothing ties the claim back to a real source.
- 04 · FailureA fabricated fact ships as if it were verified.
- 05 · ConsequenceThe false claim reaches a customer, a court, or the public.
Confidence holds, and even spikes, as the claim detaches from any source.
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 would have caught this
- Prism
- OmniGuard
- AI Detection & Response (AIDR)
A runtime layer that watches the model's internal state can flag the moment a model commits to a claim it has no support for, and hold or reroute the response before it reaches a user. Realm reads those signals in real time rather than grading the transcript after the fact.