“Honda’s Safety For Everyone approach to creating safer roadways for motorists, cyclists and pedestrians saw significant progress in 2019, and we were proud to highlight some of the latest advances, including next-generation airbag technology, coming to new products beginning next year; the expanded application of Honda Sensing and AcuraWatch technology, now on around 90 percent of new vehicles leaving Honda and Acura showrooms; and vehicle-to-everything (V2X) technology, being tested and improved through real-world deployments in and around our R&D center in Ohio.
Perhaps the most impactful moment for me personally, however, was meeting one of our customers, Kyle Shaules, who told his own Safety for Everyone story to media attending the LA auto show. One year prior, almost to the day, Kyle had a potentially life-ending collision in which his Civic struck a mountainside and flipped five times on a rainy Monday morning commute. The first people on the scene presumed him dead, but, fortunately, Kyle, an ER nurse, husband and father of two, escaped with only a broken finger.
It was a real honor to get to know Kyle and, in the process, to reflect on how the hard work of our Ohio safety engineering team had helped in making sure Kyle got home safe to his family that fateful day. The encounter also reminded me of an essential fact – that it’s not really product that’s king in our business, it’s people -- the people who use our products and the people who make them. That is the real foundation of Safety for Everyone and all that our company is doing to realize a fundamentally safer, cleaner and more sustainable mobility future.
Going into the holidays, I am incredibly proud of our team in Ohio and the essential role it plays in helping take Honda’s dreams for the future from the drawing board to the real world.”
Brian Bautsch
Principal Engineer
Manager, Crash Safety
Honda R&D Americas, Inc.
