LOS ANGELES (Legal Newsline) – Honda faces a class action lawsuit over a feature that turns vehicles off if the brake is fully pressed and the engine reaches an idling RPM.
It subjects drivers to the risk of injury, a lawsuit filed June 21 by plaintiff Hamid Bolooki in Los Angeles federal court says. Pursuing the case are Cowper Law; DiCello Levitt Gutzler; Beasley Allen; and Andrew Trailor.
The feature is called Idle Stop, and the vehicles in the proposed class are the 2016-2020 models of the Pilot, Odyssey, Acura TLX and Acura MDX.
“(T)he Idle Stop feature will oftentimes not automatically restart the engine when a driver… releases the brake pedal,” the suit says.
“The vehicle will, suddenly and without notice, become inoperable and undriveable wherever it rests, whether at a red light or stop sign, in the middle of an intersection while making a left-hand turn, or an entrance ramp to a highway.”
Drivers have filed complaints with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and posted hundreds of online complaints since 2015, the suit says.
“Honda has admitted the Idle Stop Defect in service records and in a service message sent to its dealerships, where it acknowledged that the ‘auto idle stop (may become) inoperative,’ but it offers no remedy,” the suit says.
Bolooki has experienced the defect more than 20 times in his Pilot, the suit says, leaving him a sitting duck in the middle of city traffic.