Honda
said on Thursday that news reports claiming that the power windows on
its vehicles automatically opened during the storm, flooding the cars,
were not true.
The reports said sensors that detected when a car was submerged were the culprit.
But Honda vehicles do not have a feature that rolls down the windows if the vehicle is under water, Chris Martin, a spokesman for American Honda, wrote in an e-mail.
It was widely reported that some Honda owners went to check on their vehicles and found that the power windows had lowered, and as a result the vehicles were full of water.
A report by The Associated Press on Tuesday said, “Reggie Thomas, a maintenance supervisor at a prison near the overflowing Hudson River, emerged from an overnight shift, a toothbrush in his front pocket, to find his Honda with its windows down and a foot of water inside. The windows automatically go down when the car is submerged to free drivers.”
This is not true, Mr. Martin wrote.
“There is no automatic function to lower the windows when a car is submerged,” he wrote. “But the Honda window switch spec for many years has required that our power window switches will operate to open the window even when the car is submerged. Thus, someone could still open the window as normal” if that someone was still in the car, and conscious, after it had become submerged.
He added, “That applied to all Honda and Acura models sold in at least the last 10 years or longer.”
Mr. Martin wrote that he was unaware of such an issue being identified previously.
Karen Aldana, a spokeswoman for the federal Transportation Department, said such an occurrence would be outside the government’s purview because problems like “leaks” are a “consumer satisfaction issue,” not a vehicle safety issue.
Source;
http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/01/windows-do-not-automatically-lower-under-water-honda-says/
The reports said sensors that detected when a car was submerged were the culprit.
But Honda vehicles do not have a feature that rolls down the windows if the vehicle is under water, Chris Martin, a spokesman for American Honda, wrote in an e-mail.
It was widely reported that some Honda owners went to check on their vehicles and found that the power windows had lowered, and as a result the vehicles were full of water.
A report by The Associated Press on Tuesday said, “Reggie Thomas, a maintenance supervisor at a prison near the overflowing Hudson River, emerged from an overnight shift, a toothbrush in his front pocket, to find his Honda with its windows down and a foot of water inside. The windows automatically go down when the car is submerged to free drivers.”
This is not true, Mr. Martin wrote.
“There is no automatic function to lower the windows when a car is submerged,” he wrote. “But the Honda window switch spec for many years has required that our power window switches will operate to open the window even when the car is submerged. Thus, someone could still open the window as normal” if that someone was still in the car, and conscious, after it had become submerged.
He added, “That applied to all Honda and Acura models sold in at least the last 10 years or longer.”
Mr. Martin wrote that he was unaware of such an issue being identified previously.
Karen Aldana, a spokeswoman for the federal Transportation Department, said such an occurrence would be outside the government’s purview because problems like “leaks” are a “consumer satisfaction issue,” not a vehicle safety issue.
Source;
http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/01/windows-do-not-automatically-lower-under-water-honda-says/
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