American Honda Recalls 450,000 Vehicles for Bad Seat Belts

American Honda Motor Company is recalling ~450,000 Honda and Acura vehicles because a manufacturing problem with the front seat belts may cause the seat belt buckle channel to interfere with the release button, preventing the seat belt buckle from latching. Autoliv Safety Technology of Auburn Hills Michigan is the supplier.

Registered owners of all affected vehicles will be contacted by mail and asked to take their vehicle to an authorized Honda dealer. The vehicles covered by the safety defect recall are: 2017-2020 model-year CR-V, 2018-2019 Accord and Accord Hybrid, 2018-2020 Odyssey, 2019 Insight, and 2019-2020 Acura RDX vehicles.

Dealers will replace the driver and front passenger seat belt buckle release buttons or the buckle assemblies as necessary, free of charge as required by Federal regulations. Owner notification letters are expected to be mailed 17 April 2023. Owners may contact Honda customer service at 1-888-234-2138. Honda’s numbers for this recall are NDA, QDB, BDC, MDD, LD9. TDF, FDG, ODH, YDI, ZDE. Owners may also contact the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Vehicle Safety Hotline at 1-888-327-4236 (TTY 1-800-424-9153), or go to www.nhtsa.gov about NHTSA recall 23V158.

Chronology:

• June 2019: Honda observed a potential trend in seat belt buckle latching issues and launched an investigation.
• November 2019: Honda conducted new parts durability testing and observed that low temperatures caused contraction in the seat belt buckle channel and over time, the channel surface coating may degrade, causing durability issues. Honda continued to analyze.
• July 2020: Honda began in-market investigations to determine scope of issue.
• February 2021: Honda began testing samples for evaluation.
• December 2022: Testing and data analysis indicated that durability concerns may have larger scope. Work began on tool to help identify seat belt buckle button status.
• February 2023: Tool to identify status/condition of seat belt buckle button finalized.
• March 2, 2023: Honda determined that a defect related to motor vehicle safety existed and decided to conduct a safety recall.
• As of March 2, 2023, Honda has received 301 warranty claims related to the safety defect between 22 March 2019 and 16 January 2023 with no reports of injuries or deaths related to this safety defect.