Honda Sensing - yea or nay

C

Carro con enchufe

Active Member
Honda Sensing, as we all know, is a suite of automated services to make our clarity's safer. Do you use all of them?

For my part, I use ACC regularly, including low speed follow (useful in construction zones/stop n go traffic). Sometimes I use LKAS, though the road I commute on has a few spots where it's too curvy for LKAS or the lane markings dissapear, making LKAS behave slightly erractically. I do keep CMBS on, but I get a lot of false positives on curvy roads, as it senses a car that appears to be approaching me but it's actually on the other side of the 2 lane road.

However, I've had to turn off Road Departure Mitigation after 3 unpleasant (and potentially dangerous) experiences. As I live in a rural area, much of my travel is on winding, narrow, 2 lane mountain roads. Once, some bicyclists appeared suddenly, so I swerved to the middle of the road (there was no approaching traffic, though there was a double yellow) to avoid them. However, RDM tried to swerve me back into them - I had to fight the steering wheel to avoid hitting them. A few days later, a similar situation occurred with a rural mail delivery jeep - the RDM tried to push me into that truck as I swerved to avoid it. On another occasion, I was going up a steep curvy incline on an interstate, and as I was passing an 18-wheeler, the RDM tried to push me closer than comfort towards the huge truck.

Fed up, safety features be damned, I've turned my RDM into notification only - no steering wheel jiggle nor torque. I feel safer now.

Anyone else had issues with RDM or other parts of the Honda Sensing Suite?
 
Yes. Nothing dramatic. Sometimes I need to go around things/people and it would try to pull me back. Maybe I will turn it back on on long trips as a "plan B" in case I fall asleep at the wheel
 
Wasn't aware of a notification-only setting. That's in vehicle setup on the head unit? Can CMBS be set to notification only also?
 
Carro con enchufe said:
Honda Sensing, as we all know, is a suite of automated services to make our clarity's safer. Do you use all of them?

For my part, I use ACC regularly, including low speed follow (useful in construction zones/stop n go traffic). Sometimes I use LKAS, though the road I commute on has a few spots where it's too curvy for LKAS or the lane markings dissapear, making LKAS behave slightly erractically. I do keep CMBS on, but I get a lot of false positives on curvy roads, as it senses a car that appears to be approaching me but it's actually on the other side of the 2 lane road.

However, I've had to turn off Road Departure Mitigation after 3 unpleasant (and potentially dangerous) experiences. As I live in a rural area, much of my travel is on winding, narrow, 2 lane mountain roads. Once, some bicyclists appeared suddenly, so I swerved to the middle of the road (there was no approaching traffic, though there was a double yellow) to avoid them. However, RDM tried to swerve me back into them - I had to fight the steering wheel to avoid hitting them. A few days later, a similar situation occurred with a rural mail delivery jeep - the RDM tried to push me into that truck as I swerved to avoid it. On another occasion, I was going up a steep curvy incline on an interstate, and as I was passing an 18-wheeler, the RDM tried to push me closer than comfort towards the huge truck.

Fed up, safety features be damned, I've turned my RDM into notification only - no steering wheel jiggle nor torque. I feel safer now.

Anyone else had issues with RDM or other parts of the Honda Sensing Suite?
Click to expand...
Just took my first out of town trip and kept all Honda Sense features on.
Lexington KY to Corbin KY on I-75 S, then 25 E to 58 to I-26 to 321 to Elizabethton TN, 247 m all in HV mode.
(As an aside, I got 49 mpg, never heard the angry bees [but one low humming ICE on one extended climb], and EV range held, going from 55.7 to 52.2.)

HS worked great for me with no surprises at all. I expected the ACC, CMBS, and LKAS to work fine on the Interstate and indeed they did with no problems when switching lanes or cars passing me.
But I was totally amazed that they worked so well on the winding, hilly 2 lane and 4 lane roads as well. Even on sweeping R turns when pointed toward oncoming traffic, the CMBS and ACC worked perfectly and did not false alert or slow down for oncoming traffic. Worked the same way for cars in adjacent (same direction of travel) lane even when curves pointed my car towards them. I had only one beep and warning light to brake the whole trip that I thought was not warranted. Also the LKAS worked perfectly on the Interstate but as expected didn’t have enough torque to handle some of the sharper 2 lane road turns.
So I’m totally happy with the performance of my HS.

I just kept in mind that posts have said that HS won’t pick up a stopped car after no longer sensing a moving car.
And now I will keep in mind the scenarios Caro con enchufe mentioned about RDM causing an unexpected input toward objects you just swerved to avoid.

Caro, when you had to “fight” your RDM when it tried to reverse your swerve, how hard was it? Was it the same torque as the LKAS or more? I find the LKAS very easy to over come and want to know what or expect if my RDM ever cuts in.
Thanks.
 
CMBS often gives false positives when on two lane roads with oncoming traffic that is in a righthand curve you are approaching but have yet to begin steering for.
 
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KentuckyKen said:
Just took my first out of town trip and kept all Honda Sense features on.
Lexington KY to Corbin KY on I-75 S, then 25 E to 58 to I-26 to 321 to Elizabethton TN, 247 m all in HV mode.
(As an aside, I got 49 mpg, never heard the angry bees [but one low humming ICE on one extended climb], and EV range held, going from 55.7 to 52.2.)
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Ken, that's great mileage. It seems that there's a correlation between good HV mileage (other than keeping moderate speeds) and keeping a significant charge on the battery. Seems that the lower mileage numbers I've seen reported correlate with people driving with depleted batteries. Makes sense to me since the car has a lot more options for efficiency with a significantly charged battery.
 
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PHEV Newbie said:
Ken, that's great mileage. It seems that there's a correlation between good HV mileage (other than keeping moderate speeds) is keeping a significant charge on the battery. Seems that the lower mileage numbers I've seen reported correlates with people driving with depleted batteries. Makes sense to me since the car has a lot more options for efficiency with a significantly charged battery.
Click to expand...
I agree. With the battery fully charged, I started and ended in HV mode so the mpg is an honest number. The conditions were 70 mph on the Interstate and 65 on the 2 and 4 lane parts with a few little towns to go through. Also tracked elevation and it was a gain of 101 ft Lexington to Corbin and 447 for the gain to Elizabethton for a total gain of 548 ft.
I saw the power flow go through every cycle possible quite frequently.
I’ll post details after the return leg.
 
KentuckyKen said:
Just took my first out of town trip and kept all Honda Sense features on.
Lexington KY to Corbin KY on I-75 S, then 25 E to 58 to I-26 to 321 to Elizabethton TN, 247 m all in HV mode.
(As an aside, I got 49 mpg, never heard the angry bees [but one low humming ICE on one extended climb], and EV range held, going from 55.7 to 52.2.)

HS worked great for me with no surprises at all. I expected the ACC, CMBS, and LKAS to work fine on the Interstate and indeed they did with no problems when switching lanes or cars passing me.
But I was totally amazed that they worked so well on the winding, hilly 2 lane and 4 lane roads as well. Even on sweeping R turns when pointed toward oncoming traffic, the CMBS and ACC worked perfectly and did not false alert or slow down for oncoming traffic. Worked the same way for cars in adjacent (same direction of travel) lane even when curves pointed my car towards them. I had only one beep and warning light to brake the whole trip that I thought was not warranted. Also the LKAS worked perfectly on the Interstate but as expected didn’t have enough torque to handle some of the sharper 2 lane road turns.
So I’m totally happy with the performance of my HS.

I just kept in mind that posts have said that HS won’t pick up a stopped car after no longer sensing a moving car.
And now I will keep in mind the scenarios Caro con enchufe mentioned about RDM causing an unexpected input toward objects you just swerved to avoid.

Caro, when you had to “fight” your RDM when it tried to reverse your swerve, how hard was it? Was it the same torque as the LKAS or more? I find the LKAS very easy to over come and want to know what or expect if my RDM ever cuts in.
Thanks.
Click to expand...
The LKAS torque is much lower than the RDM torque.
 
Works fine for me. There's one place on a frequent freeway route where there's a Y junction. Because of the lane marking for that junction, if I don't activate the turn indicator, the RDM system gets mixed up - but not enough to rip the wheel out of my hands or anything. So now I've learned to indicate the turn even though the lane is going to head in that direction.
 
Turned off every aspect of Honda Sensing. Too many times it gives false warnings. I just wish there was a way to turn off collision mitigation braking system permanently. Royal pain to have to do it every time I start the car.
 
I have used the sensing features but also received several false alarms with RDM and Brake warnings for no apparent reason. The ACC and LKAS are really cool but for me I rather be in control. I find these technologies amazingly cool but it’s hard for me let the car do its own thing especially with all the unsafe drivers out on the road.
 
On the highway I find ACC and LKAS are practical. I only wish the LKAS would let the car steer itself for much longer periods of time before demanding I touch the steering wheel. On long straight roads the LKAS works fine by itself. I have learned to just rest my hand on the bottom of the steering wheel which makes the car think I'm steering. Still I'd rather have my hands free. The ACC takes too long to resume a set speed.

Really all I want out of a car is the ACC and LKAS. The industry can keep all of the other promised autonomous features. I enjoy driving and don't want my car to drive itself... except for those several hour trips on long straight roads. Where there are curves in the road I'm happy to drive. I suppose in a high traffic area, which our's is not, the low speed follow can be a great feature.

Around town, where I've long used cruise control in many cars, the ACC is less dependable. At any curves in the road it can easily lose sight of a car ahead, then may take too long to reacquire it. Of course the LKAS doesn't work under 45mph so isn't of use around town. I do play with the ACC in town but it's more of a game than a true assist. I have to pay way too much attention to it for it to be a useful assist.

I find the whole lane departure system to be useless. It complains if I'm too close to the edge of the lane (I sometimes go there on purpose to avoid riding on rough spots in the pavement), and will brake when not needed.

Having followed the "always in Sport mode" thread I've tried it a few times but the ACC feature kills the sticky regen feature so just one more reason for me not to use Sport mode.

The Break Hold is my favorite feature by far. I really miss that feature when driving our 4Runner.
 
ACC seems to accelerate faster for me when Econ is off and in HV. Going to Sport Mode seems to be even faster. Much less annoying to those behind you.
 
I find that the LKAS is more annoying than useful - only a couple of times when I was distracted was it useful. Sometimes there is patched crack in the road that it thinks is a lane marking and says I am going out of the lane when I'm not. The CMBS seems to give a lot of false positives, especially on a winding road, I don't find it very useful. The ACC does not adapt very quickly, in heavier traffic it is not that great. On a longer trip in lighter traffic it would be more useful. I liked the rear side warnings for pulling out of a parking spot that my Volt had, I wish the Clarity had that feature. I agree with jdonalds that the brake hold is the most useful feature, it never gives any false or defective operation. The blind spot feature is ok, but I think I liked the Volt one better, the flashing yellow on the mirror that worked on both sides. It is not useful at all to show me the right rear side view when I use my turn signal because I'm making a turn. I did have a false positive on the Volt one time, it said there was a car on the right in my blind spot when there was no car at all, and it stayed on for a bit after I changed lanes.
 
I think the suite of Honda Sensing safety features are an excellent addition to Honda vehicles and I’m happy they are there. That said, I don’t use them. That’s not the dissonance it may seem. The software and hardware engineers who develop, test, and implement these safety systems have to do so while keeping in mind a very broad range of driver skill, experience, and health, as well as as very broad range of traffic, road, weather, and vehicle conditions. For a driver like me and for the places I drive, I find most of the Honda Sensing features to be intrusive and disruptive. I enjoy driving and have done so for 50 years. It’s not just a way to get from one place to another for me. I pay attention, don’t use cell phones, etc. and drive the car. On the other hand, I see lots of folks most days who really need lane departure and collision warning, etc. features because they are not really driving, they just using a car to get from place to place while multi-tasking on just about everything else. So kudos to Honda for including Honda Sensing and I’m sure the systems are saving lives. I may get to point where I appreciate them too, but for now I don’t want the car steering and braking and beeping without me doing it.
 
I discovered yesterday that ACC can’t see motorcycles. Yesterday I was on the freeway and my ACC tried to accelerate into a motorcycle so I had to turn it off while behind it. Anyone else notice that?
 
Just today my ACC slowed for a motorcycle and later the CMBS beeped/flashed and then barked for another motorcycle that pulled over to the side is the road in front of me. I wouldn’t trust it to do so every time, but it did it for the only 2 motorcycles I’ve followed so far.
 
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