Sorry you had to find out the hard way, but it's a useful reminder to everyone that engines need oil like people need blood - if it gets too low it's a terminal problem.  However oil tight you think an engine is, you still need to pull the dipstick out once a week or you can easily be facing a large bill - it's perfectly normal for engines to burn a bit of oil, so leaving oil checks to the garage at service time is a dangerous option.

The oil light is an oil pressure warning, not an oil level indicator, and if it comes on because the oil level is too low, the damage will have already been done - Honda is not unique in this, it's normal.  Some cars have an electronic oil level indicator these days, but most still rely on a dipstick.

Incidentally, overfilling with oil is not quite as bad as running out, but it can still ruin your engine and on quite a few modern motors it takes quite a while for all the oil to drain back to the sump once the engine's switched off.  If you check the dipstick too soon the level may look low when if fact there's plenty of oil still dispersed around the engine.  The result is overfilling.  This can make the oil froth and lead to bearing failure, or on diesels it can get drawn into the inlet manifold which will make the engine run on it.  It will then rev uncontrollably until it goes bang in a loud and very expensive way.  

So, to make sure you're checking the oil level accurately, leave the car for at least a couple of hours - overnight is good.  Check it on level ground as far as possible and use the right oil to top up - some modern angines are very sensitive to the type of oil, so check the handbook.

Thanks again for the reminder and here's hoping it never happens to you again.

Tim