Safety plays a key part in our purchase decisions, but the cost often puts it out of reach for some buyers. While there are standard safety features like airbags on every car, more advanced features often come at a premium. Automakers are working to make more of these features standard and Honda just crossed a major milestone with its Honda Sensing technology in one million vehicles on U.S. roads.
Honda Sensing is a suite of safety features, which includes collision mitigation braking, forward collision warning, lane keep assist, road departure mitigation, and adaptive cruise control. Today, it’s standard only on select Hondas including the 2018 Honda Clarity Plug-in Hybrid, Clarity Electric, and Clarity Fuel Cell, 2018 Honda Accord and Accord Hybrid, and the upcoming 2019 Honda Insight Hybrid. The goal is to have the Honda Sensing system standard across the entire lineup by 2022.
Though it’s not standard on every Honda yet, it’s still available as an option on additional Hondas. This includes the 2018 Honda Fit, Civic sedan, coupe, and hatchback, CR-V, Pilot, Odyssey, and Ridgeline.
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The technology is still new, but studies show it makes a real difference in reducing collisions. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and the Highway Loss Data Institute found a reduction of $379 on the cost of collision claims on vehicles equipped with Honda Sensing, an 11 percent reduction in claim rates for damage to other vehicles and property, and a 28 percent reduction in claim rates for injuries to people in other vehicles.
“Honda dreams of a collision-free mobile society and the Honda Sensing technology has a crucial role to play in advancing us toward that goal,” said Henio Arcangeli, Jr., senior vice president of the American Honda Automobile Division & general manager of the Honda brand. “With the rapidly growing population of Honda vehicles applying these technologies, we hope to significantly reduce collisions involving Honda vehicles within the next three to four years.”
Studies show that even if advanced safety technologies aren’t enough to prevent an accident, they still improve safety. Simply managing to slow a vehicle down before impact can significantly reduce the cost of damage to a vehicle and the severity of injuries to passengers. Automatic emergency braking (AEB) has been show to have such a positive impact that 20 automakers are voluntarily agreeing to make it standard on 95 percent of vehicles by 2022. Honda plans to meet that commitment two years ahead of schedule.
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The application rate for Honda Sensing more than doubled from 2016 to 2017 to more than 50,000 vehicles a month. That puts this safety technology on 69 percent of 2018 model-year Hondas on the road.
