Waiting to enter a parking lot because we had to wait for a pedestrian to move, we proceeded at c. 3km /hr because of construction on the sidewalk (a steel plate cemented in, but raised a bit). The undercarriage contacted the steel plate apparently because of a tow-bar underneath the car that made it lower than it seemed looking at it from the front. As a result of the contact the airbags suddenly exploded and the seat belts yanked us back and I sustained a cracked sternum. This took weeks to heal and we had to cancel our summer plans. Since the labor to replace the airbags and seat belts and repair the undercarriage made the car a write-off we had to buy a new car for more than double what the insurance paid.
My beef with Honda is 1) airbags should never go off at such a low speed and 2) since the hybrid is low to the ground in the first place, why was there something even lower underneath.
The police officer and I watched as other cars went over that steel plate and everyone else made it over without incidence. There were no other Honda Civic Hybrids which tried.
I wrote to the president of Honda Canada, but the person who contacted me was from the Customer Service department, and though he seemed nice enough, I basically got blown off.
Waiting to enter a parking lot because we had to wait for a pedestrian to move, we proceeded at c. 3km /hr because of construction on the sidewalk (a steel plate cemented in, but raised a bit). The undercarriage contacted the steel plate apparently because of a tow-bar underneath the car that made it lower than it seemed looking at it from the front. As a result of the contact the airbags suddenly exploded and the seat belts yanked us back and I sustained a cracked sternum. This took weeks to heal and we had to cancel our summer plans. Since the labor to replace the airbags and seat belts and repair the undercarriage made the car a write-off we had to buy a new car for more than double what the insurance paid.
My beef with Honda is 1) airbags should never go off at such a low speed and 2) since the hybrid is low to the ground in the first place, why was there something even lower underneath.
The police officer and I watched as other cars went over that steel plate and everyone else made it over without incidence. There were no other Honda Civic Hybrids which tried.
I wrote to the president of Honda Canada, but the person who contacted me was from the Customer Service department, and though he seemed nice enough, I basically got blown off.
- piccolo, Dundas, Ontario, canada