NHTSA Complaint #11534428 — 2021 HONDA CLARITY

I was reversing in order to go up a driveway at an Airbnb where my husband and I had been staying. The bottom of the car is low to the ground, and it was difficult to clear a rise at the bottom of the driveway. I was putting the car in reverse in order to try again when the car made a loud noise and in a split second veered at high speed to the other side of the cul de sac (the wheel was turned in order to go back up the driveway so it explains the trajectory but not what happened). Luckily, no cars were coming and it was a quiet residential area. The car crashed into the opposite curb and the right passenger airbag deployed. Luckily, no one was hurt. However, the car froze up and I could not steer or brake to avoid hitting the curb at high speed. The car was towed to a local collision service used by Beaverton Honda, and my husband and I flew home as we were out of town. The car sat at the collision lot for several weeks, the company saying they had no time to get to it. It was eventually declared totaled, and we were reimbursed by insurance. I never found out what went wrong with the car. We called Honda corporate and they made a report but we never heard back from them. I wish I knew what caused this to happen to a 2021 Honda Clarity with only 10,000 miles on the odometer. It would seem that scraping the bottom of the car may have jarred the electronics.