Honda continues to add to its safety arsenal - South Bend Tribune

Bob Briney doesn’t sell a new car these days without walking customers through the suite of sophisticated safety equipment that is now becoming standard across the Honda lineup.

It doesn’t take too long. Most of the controls are pretty simple and intuitive, becoming second nature after only a short time with the vehicle, said Briney, a sales consultant at Basney Honda in Mishawaka.

Just a few years ago, such equipment was available only on high-end vehicles, but Honda already has its Honda Sensing suite throughout the vast majority of its lineup with only a couple more models to go.

While the advanced safety features aim to reduce the likelihood and the severity of accidents, Honda’s focus on winning five-star ratings for crash safety seeks to improve the survivability of major highway collisions, said Briney during a recent demonstration drive in a new CR-V.

“Honda Sensing is a step toward autonomous driving,” said Briney. “But it doesn’t eliminate the need for driver focus and attention.”

In fact, the advanced safety equipment ensures that drivers remain attentive by flashing a warning if it doesn’t sense enough involvement, said Briney, while pointing out that most of the systems can be shut down or adjusted with the simple touch of a button to suit the tastes of the driver.

Though it might seem unimportant compared to other advanced features, the brake hold, Briney demonstrated, keeps the car from creeping forward at intersections until the driver touches the accelerator. That feature could prevent an inadvertent bump into another vehicle at an intersection.

Most other advanced equipment depends on cameras and radar mounted around the vehicle to keep it on the road and to help avoid collisions.

Lane-keep assist, the road-departure mitigation system and the automatic high beam controls depend on cameras at the top of the windshield while radar is used for the adaptive cruise control with low speed follow as well as the collision mitigation braking system that will actually apply the brakes if it senses an accident is imminent.

Briney said it once cost about $1,800 to get advanced safety equipment on a car, but those prices have come down considerably because Honda has included it on the vast majority of its vehicles.

While those advanced features are now standard, Honda also offers blind-spot monitoring, traffic sign recognition, and rear cross-traffic alert on all but its base-level vehicles throughout most of its lineup.

Briney said his favorite systems are lane-keep assist and adaptive cruise control as they really seem to reduce fatigue, especially on interstate highways in big cities where there is lots of traffic moving in and out at inconsistent speeds.

“The adaptive cruise control will automatically adjust when someone cuts in front of you to ensure you have the proper amount of space to stop,” said Briney. “The systems are getting more refined and better at providing protection without being obtrusive.”

October 25, 2020 at 05:00PM
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Honda continues to add to its safety arsenal - South Bend Tribune

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