NHTSA Complaint #11534159 — 2017 HONDA CR-V

While driving on I-95 near Colonial Heights, VA we heard a loud BOOM - thought it was a tire although I continued to maintain control of car. Saw in rearview mirror, a small shingle-size piece of material fly off top of our 2017 Honda CRV, toward car behind us. Stopped & saw that our sunroof had literally BLOWN APART. The "shingle-size" material was the middle of our sunroof blowing off. Fortunately we had just closed our interior sunshade & fortunately the car behind us did not look to be affected by the airborne sunroof material. There was no truck in front of us (no flying debris from another car) & nothing fell on the top of the car! Had we not had the sunshade closed, 1000's of pieces of glass would've rained down on us, possibly causing me to lose control of the vehicle & quite certainly causing an accident w/those around me. Fortunately we were 1.5 miles from an exit & a Honda dealership (!) that assisted us in attaching Crash Wrap to the top of the car so we could continue on our way home to FL - but not without stopping 4 add'l times & also using packing tape to keep the crash tape on the car (due to rain). Broken glass continued to "rain" down onto the sunshade for the next 700 miles - we also feared the crash tape would come off and whip back at another vehicle. I've documented incident w/pictures, contacted my Insurance Company, American Honda Corp, Holler Honda (local dealer) & am scheduled to have the sunroof replaced in the next week. Am. Honda Corp customer svc was unaware of any "exploding sunroof issues", nor was my local Honda dealer. However, the Svc Advisor @ Honda in VA had actually seen 3 exploded sunroofs since May! After some investigation on my part, I found an active court case of Honda/Acura owners who have also experienced exploding sunroofs. There was absolutely NO warning that predicated this incident. This incident could've had a vastly different outcome had my interior shade remained open.