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Automatic braking alone is a huge deal: if you're a bit late in braking, you get a warning. If you go past that, brakes auto apply. When configured correctly, I

Automatic braking alone is a huge deal: if you're a bit late in braking, you get a warning. If you go past that, brakes auto apply. When configured correctly, I don't even notice it's there 99.9% of the time...and the times I do I'm glad it's there, because the beep pulls you out of a momentary distraction. The only problem is not every car on the road has it yet.

epgui 7d ago
Anecdotally, the only times I've ever noticed these chimes and the auto-braking (even automatic rolling-up of windows), it was false positives, and it was mildly terrifying: for a brief and unexpected moment I was no longer in control of my vehicle. [Recent Honda Civic and Audi A3 models]
- stephencanon 7d ago
  I've only had a couple weeks in rentals with automatic emergency braking, and was very nearly been rear-ended twice due to false positives. Anecdotal, and I'm sure they'll improve with time, but I would never allow the system I experienced anywhere near a car I owned. It was profoundly unsafe.
  - Terr_ 7d ago
    Assuming you're already stuck with such a vehicle, is there any benefit to a dashcam that captures the alert-noises to prove the that you, the driver, never chose to brake unsafely? I realize this relies heavily on the questionable sanity and ethics of insurance companies. Even if they agree you aren't personally at fault, they'd probably just increase the premiums for everyone with that model, rather than sue the car manufacturer.
    - ozim 7d ago
      Never hear of someone who was rear ended being liable. Guy behind should keep a distance that allows him reacting in time and he is responsible for keeping that distance. The same for skiing you don’t have eyes on the back of your head, one behind you is responsible for not crashing into you. In car you have rear mirrors but if you have something in front of you and breaking you are not going to look in the mirrors.
      - epgui 6d ago
        Yeah, I suppose this could vary by geography, but my understanding is that in Canada, you're nearly-absolutely responsible for hitting anything in front of you, and nearly-absolutely not responsible for anything hitting you from behind. The only exception I could think of would be if someone intentionally jumped in front of your car, or if you did a patently and clearly unsafe maneuver, but even then I think there'd be a sort of rebuttable presumption of fault.
  - WalterBright 7d ago
    Some years ago, I was in a major crash. The traffic in front of me stopped, I braked hard and stopped in time, the truck behind me rammed me into the car in front. Nearly killed me. Some time later, I was on a snowy road. The cars in front of me stopped, I stopped, and checked my rearview mirror. There was a truck, who clearly wasn't going to stop. I pulled off to the side, and he hit the car in front of me.
  - BobaFloutist 7d ago
    >was very nearly been rear-ended twice due to false positives To be fair, if the cars behind you had automatic emergency braking you would be at much lower risk of getting rear-ended when there's a false positive.
    - Gigachad 7d ago
      Pretty much, they would have been getting chimes about being too close to start with.
dlisboa 7d ago
> The only problem is not every car on the road has it yet. Yep. ADAS should be mandatory like seat belts and airbags. A regulatory body should be able to come up with a minimum standard for it.
- lazyasciiart 7d ago
  Even airbags were phased in over decades. Front-seat airbags were first available in the early 70s and didn't become mandatory until 20 years later.
officeplant 7d ago
>Automatic braking alone is a huge deal Except I had to turn it off for my Ford E-Transit, because it will freak out at nothing. Sometimes it screams at me for cars that aren't even in my lane that suddenly slowed. Sometimes it misjudges a ripple in the crappy asphalt here as an obstacle I'm going to hit. There is a high chance its going to brake for no reason at all and cause an accident. I left the warning system on, but I will never give it control over the brakes.
- throw1234567891 7d ago
  Good news, everyone. Soon you won't be able to switch it off.
  - Denatonium 7d ago
    I suspect this will just lead to people pulling the ABS fuse and losing ABS and ESC along with AEB.
    - throw1234567891 6d ago
      I suspect people will just get on with it. They're defeating us by atrophy. Slowly, one by one.
- uuddlrlrbaba 7d ago
  Fords seem notorious for this but usually can be fixed. Have you tried driving it to a dealership and trading it in?
  - officeplant 7d ago
    Multiple times actually, lmao. Unfortunately its only worth $19,000 currently (sticker price of $67,000 three years ago)
- Loughla 7d ago
  Any time I crossed a bridge near me that is kind of steep and has a structure over it, the automatic braking engaged HARD. Like hard enough that I nearly caused accidents until I figured out how to turn it off. Not great.
Denatonium 7d ago
Automatic braking can also be hazardous! In a front-wheel drive car, understeer is a fact of life. When you're approaching a bend in the road with your foot in the accelerator, you're going to be pointed at the guardrail, since the car's going to rotate around the bend when lift your foot off the gas. Now imagine you're driving a car with AEB and it slams on the brakes while you were lightly accelerating towards the guardrail, right before you were going to lift your foot off the gas. What was a perfectly routine curve just turned into complete loss of control, and there's a very good chance your car's going straight into the guardrail! Even when it doesn't slam on the brakes, if you were concentrating on the road, those jarring beeps can just as easily break your focus on driving as they can break your focus on a distraction. I think it's better to avoid distraction by keeping cruise control off, and you can compensate for having human-level reaction time by following at a safe distance and staying in an appropriate gear or setting an appropriate level of regenerative braking to avoid mindlessly getting too close to the car in front of you. I think that too often, driver assist features are being added to cars to compensate for the other features (like adaptive cruise control) that encourage drivers to mentally disengage from the task of driving. There's also the fact (well, opinion) that driving a car without electronic assists and nannies is fun and engaging (especially on back roads with the windows down and the radio up). Riding in an autonomous vehicle is just as dull as riding on public transportation, all while being less efficient, less social, and worse for the environment. It would be interesting if we could somehow test how the reduction in crashes with the introduction of driver assists would compare with if we had just banned cruise control, introduced minimum visibility and minimum suspension stiffness standards, and mandated manual transmissions.
- jeffbee 7d ago
  This is the perfect expression of chronic windshield brain. If you are driving anywhere near the limits of dynamic stability on a public road, then you are already driving dangerously. Also, computerized stability control works better than 99.99% of human drivers.
  - Denatonium 7d ago
    The limits of dynamic stability go down drastically when the brakes are locked up. You can be _far_ from the limits of dynamic stability when going around a bend in the road, but if your car locks up the brakes mid-bend, you can unexpectedly go from nowhere close to those limits to exceeding them in the blink of an eye. A human driver would wait until they've straightened out to brake hard, but the computer in a car is entirely at the mercy of whoever programmed it. Hopefully it would do the same, but do you really trust Tesla (or whomever) with their move-fast-and-break-things additude? Then there's the fact that automatic emergency braking requires the software algorithm to make decisions based on data that is a lot more complex and ambiguous than the data used by electronic stability control and ABS systems. It's much easier to detect steering angle and wheel slippage than it is to detect how an object in the distance is likely to behave.

epgui 7d ago

Anecdotally, the only times I've ever noticed these chimes and the auto-braking (even automatic rolling-up of windows), it was false positives, and it was mildly terrifying: for a brief and unexpected moment I was no longer in control of my vehicle. [Recent Honda Civic and Audi A3 models]

stephencanon 7d ago
I've only had a couple weeks in rentals with automatic emergency braking, and was very nearly been rear-ended twice due to false positives. Anecdotal, and I'm sure they'll improve with time, but I would never allow the system I experienced anywhere near a car I owned. It was profoundly unsafe.
- Terr_ 7d ago
  Assuming you're already stuck with such a vehicle, is there any benefit to a dashcam that captures the alert-noises to prove the that you, the driver, never chose to brake unsafely? I realize this relies heavily on the questionable sanity and ethics of insurance companies. Even if they agree you aren't personally at fault, they'd probably just increase the premiums for everyone with that model, rather than sue the car manufacturer.
  - ozim 7d ago
    Never hear of someone who was rear ended being liable. Guy behind should keep a distance that allows him reacting in time and he is responsible for keeping that distance. The same for skiing you don’t have eyes on the back of your head, one behind you is responsible for not crashing into you. In car you have rear mirrors but if you have something in front of you and breaking you are not going to look in the mirrors.
    - epgui 6d ago
      Yeah, I suppose this could vary by geography, but my understanding is that in Canada, you're nearly-absolutely responsible for hitting anything in front of you, and nearly-absolutely not responsible for anything hitting you from behind. The only exception I could think of would be if someone intentionally jumped in front of your car, or if you did a patently and clearly unsafe maneuver, but even then I think there'd be a sort of rebuttable presumption of fault.
- WalterBright 7d ago
  Some years ago, I was in a major crash. The traffic in front of me stopped, I braked hard and stopped in time, the truck behind me rammed me into the car in front. Nearly killed me. Some time later, I was on a snowy road. The cars in front of me stopped, I stopped, and checked my rearview mirror. There was a truck, who clearly wasn't going to stop. I pulled off to the side, and he hit the car in front of me.
- BobaFloutist 7d ago
  >was very nearly been rear-ended twice due to false positives To be fair, if the cars behind you had automatic emergency braking you would be at much lower risk of getting rear-ended when there's a false positive.
  - Gigachad 7d ago
    Pretty much, they would have been getting chimes about being too close to start with.

dlisboa 7d ago

> The only problem is not every car on the road has it yet. Yep. ADAS should be mandatory like seat belts and airbags. A regulatory body should be able to come up with a minimum standard for it.

lazyasciiart 7d ago
Even airbags were phased in over decades. Front-seat airbags were first available in the early 70s and didn't become mandatory until 20 years later.

officeplant 7d ago

>Automatic braking alone is a huge deal Except I had to turn it off for my Ford E-Transit, because it will freak out at nothing. Sometimes it screams at me for cars that aren't even in my lane that suddenly slowed. Sometimes it misjudges a ripple in the crappy asphalt here as an obstacle I'm going to hit. There is a high chance its going to brake for no reason at all and cause an accident. I left the warning system on, but I will never give it control over the brakes.

throw1234567891 7d ago
Good news, everyone. Soon you won't be able to switch it off.
- Denatonium 7d ago
  I suspect this will just lead to people pulling the ABS fuse and losing ABS and ESC along with AEB.
  - throw1234567891 6d ago
    I suspect people will just get on with it. They're defeating us by atrophy. Slowly, one by one.
uuddlrlrbaba 7d ago
Fords seem notorious for this but usually can be fixed. Have you tried driving it to a dealership and trading it in?
- officeplant 7d ago
  Multiple times actually, lmao. Unfortunately its only worth $19,000 currently (sticker price of $67,000 three years ago)
Loughla 7d ago
Any time I crossed a bridge near me that is kind of steep and has a structure over it, the automatic braking engaged HARD. Like hard enough that I nearly caused accidents until I figured out how to turn it off. Not great.

Denatonium 7d ago

Automatic braking can also be hazardous! In a front-wheel drive car, understeer is a fact of life. When you're approaching a bend in the road with your foot in the accelerator, you're going to be pointed at the guardrail, since the car's going to rotate around the bend when lift your foot off the gas. Now imagine you're driving a car with AEB and it slams on the brakes while you were lightly accelerating towards the guardrail, right before you were going to lift your foot off the gas. What was a perfectly routine curve just turned into complete loss of control, and there's a very good chance your car's going straight into the guardrail! Even when it doesn't slam on the brakes, if you were concentrating on the road, those jarring beeps can just as easily break your focus on driving as they can break your focus on a distraction. I think it's better to avoid distraction by keeping cruise control off, and you can compensate for having human-level reaction time by following at a safe distance and staying in an appropriate gear or setting an appropriate level of regenerative braking to avoid mindlessly getting too close to the car in front of you. I think that too often, driver assist features are being added to cars to compensate for the other features (like adaptive cruise control) that encourage drivers to mentally disengage from the task of driving. There's also the fact (well, opinion) that driving a car without electronic assists and nannies is fun and engaging (especially on back roads with the windows down and the radio up). Riding in an autonomous vehicle is just as dull as riding on public transportation, all while being less efficient, less social, and worse for the environment. It would be interesting if we could somehow test how the reduction in crashes with the introduction of driver assists would compare with if we had just banned cruise control, introduced minimum visibility and minimum suspension stiffness standards, and mandated manual transmissions.

jeffbee 7d ago
This is the perfect expression of chronic windshield brain. If you are driving anywhere near the limits of dynamic stability on a public road, then you are already driving dangerously. Also, computerized stability control works better than 99.99% of human drivers.
- Denatonium 7d ago
  The limits of dynamic stability go down drastically when the brakes are locked up. You can be _far_ from the limits of dynamic stability when going around a bend in the road, but if your car locks up the brakes mid-bend, you can unexpectedly go from nowhere close to those limits to exceeding them in the blink of an eye. A human driver would wait until they've straightened out to brake hard, but the computer in a car is entirely at the mercy of whoever programmed it. Hopefully it would do the same, but do you really trust Tesla (or whomever) with their move-fast-and-break-things additude? Then there's the fact that automatic emergency braking requires the software algorithm to make decisions based on data that is a lot more complex and ambiguous than the data used by electronic stability control and ABS systems. It's much easier to detect steering angle and wheel slippage than it is to detect how an object in the distance is likely to behave.