NHTSA Complaint #11680991 — 2017 HONDA ACCORD

Several times when driving at speeds of 50-60mph with my foot steady on the accelerator, the car will suddenly start to slow down so that I am going only, say, 40 mph. Either at the same time or shortly after this occurs, multiple warning lights/messages appear on the dash: Collision Mitigation System, Brake System, ACC System all appear and messages say they are not working, which is true, although the brakes seemed to still work fine. When this occurred the first time, I was able to pull off the highway and stop, unsure of what to do. I continued to try and drive because I was in the middle of a long trip. The slow downs kept happening intermittently, but I discovered that if I pumped the accelerator a couple of times, the speed would be restored. However, this was still a dangerous situation because I never knew when it would occur, so I stayed in the right lane and had to avoid any situations requiring confident acceleration, such as crossing a busy street. In total, this has occurred while I’m driving approximately 10-15 times, but the warning lights may or may not go away after a while, or after stopping and re-starting the car. I took car to DAR Cars Honda Fairfax (Virginia) dealer who updated software and said it should be fixed. Next day as I was driving about 50 mph, the slowdown occurred again and the warning lights came on. I drove back to the dealer, during which time the slowdown occurred one more time with me pumping accelerator to get power back, and left it with them. They could not reproduce the symptoms. I had them keep and drive it another day to see if they could make the slowdown occur, but it did not, so I picked up the car. However, I feel that this is a dangerous situation and I can no longer drive this car confidently on long trips or in situations where I need acceleration that I can rely on.