Wiring harness or short circuit on the 2005 Honda Accord
2 crashes 2 injuries 4 of the 12 reports for this failure mention a crash, a fire, an injury or a death. Those are the owner's words on the complaint form, not a verified finding, and one report can mention more than one.
When wiring harness or short circuit gets reported
Owners of the 2005 Honda Accord report wiring harness or short circuit at a median of 80,000 miles. A quarter of the reports come in before 40,000 miles and a quarter after 105,000 miles, from 12 reports that carried an odometer reading.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 88,000 miles. It is the 18th most-reported problem on this model year.
The mileage distribution
The reported range runs from 35,000 miles at the tenth percentile to 220,000 miles at the ninetieth, a spread of 185,542 miles across the middle 80% of reports.
When the reports scatter this far, the mileage is telling you about how these cars were driven more than about the part itself.
8% of the dated reports were filed under 36,000 miles.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 36,400 miles | 40,000 miles | 81,000 miles | 105,000 miles | 221,942 miles |
Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.
What a percentile can and cannot tell you here
These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.
What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.
Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.
What happens, and what it costs
Of these reports, 2 a crash and 2 an injury are mentioned. Owners write their own complaints and the agency does not verify them, so read this as what the reports say happened rather than as a confirmed count.
Putting it right typically runs $400–$3,500 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.
The same failure on other years
The same failure is reported on 14 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2014, at a median of 5,000 miles, and latest on the 2007 at 125,000 miles.
By volume the 2005 is the worst of them, which makes this a problem of this specific year rather than of the model as a whole.
If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.
Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens
What owners wrote
Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.
I currently own a 2005 honda. I just recently had a problem with it that really has me concerned. From what I'm told by the service manager at one honda dealership the wiring harness under the driverside seat was too short and broke. The SRS (supplemental restraint system) light went on indicating a problem with the airbag system. This apparently detects when someone is leaning to far foward in the seat and would prevent the airbag deploying and injuring them. This disabled the airbag in my car. No airbag. No protection. The wiring harness was replaced as well as the sensor assembly. This fixed the problem. I am reporting this because the 2004 honda accords had a recall on this problem. I have an 05 and the same thing happened. This is a problem honda should fix immediatley. I'm told the 05's have no recalls. I want to be protected in case of an accident. Honda needs to fix this in all the 05's. The SRS wiring harness should not be so delicate or short that it can break just from moving your seat back and forth.
Tl*the contact owns a 2005 honda accord. The contact stated that his driver seat position sensor wiring harness failed. The dealer stated that the VIN was not included in NHTSA campaign id number 07v001000 (air bags:frontal:sensor/control module). The failure mileage was 36,000.
Tl*the contact owns a 2005 honda accord. The contact had a 40,000 mile repair performed at the dealer. Four days later, the gauge control module shorted out internally. The dealer attempted to reprogram the module, but was unsuccessful. The module was sent out to paolo alto, ca to be reprogrammed. Once it was completed, the module was returned to the dealer for installation in the vehicle. A couple of months later, while driving at an unknown speed with the cruise control activated, it would not disengage when the brake pedal was depressed. The vehicle was locked in the cruise control mode and it continued moving towards oncoming traffic. The contact lost control of the vehicle and crashed into two vehicles. The contact and another person were injured. The vehicle was destroyed. A police report was filed. The investigator stated that the instrument cluster module caused the crash. The failure mileage was 40,000.
Also reported on the 2005 Honda Accord
Other powertrain problem
Other electrical problem
Other body or interior problem
Airbag warning light or occupant sensor fault
Other speed control problem
Other engine problem
How far this goes
Complaints are voluntary, so 12 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.
Questions this page answers
At what mileage does wiring harness or short circuit happen on the 2005 Honda Accord?
Across 12 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 80,000 miles. A quarter were filed before 40,000 miles and a quarter after 105,000 miles. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is wiring harness or short circuit on the 2005 Honda Accord?
12 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.1 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.
What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars
Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed