Automatic braking systems save lives. Now they’ll need to work at 62 MPH

I have a Tesla with AEB that drives me up the wall. I'm often driving in heavy traffic, and occasionally need to quickly, but smoothly, stop within a few feet of the vehicle ahead. My car decides I'm cutting it too close, engages full automatic braking, jerking the car to sudden stop with a 10 foot gap. Sometimes the vehicle ahead will even start moving before my car is stopped, but it has decided to stop and stop it shall. Cannot override even by flooring the accelerator. I miss cars that did what they were told, when they were told to do it. For the record I've never rear-ended anyone.

There's a setting to disable that. I think you can just convert the action into a warning beep. That's the first thing I did, because I was pretty sure that the automatic braking was going to cause an accident before it saved me from an accident.

That's also part of the reason I would never even consider the Tesla insurance, where the cost is based on driving events like that I think? There is a RV that is parked on the street near a curve near my house, and every single time I drive by I get a warning about smashing into it.

>For the record I've never rear-ended anyone.

I understand the sentiment. However consider that cars kill around 2 million people, and maim another 2, every single year. For scale, its equivalent to a fully loaded passenger jet falling out of the sky every few hours.

Anything you can do to reduce this insanity is welcome.

Interesting… I have had my Tesla for 5 years and have never had this happen. Wonder what is different.

The driver.

Every time I've been in a car with someone who routinely complains about their AEB its no wonder why the system is constantly "falsely triggering". I try to not ride with those people again.

> I have a Tesla with AEB that drives me up the wall. I'm often driving in heavy traffic, and occasionally need to quickly, but smoothly, stop within a few feet of the vehicle ahead. My car decides I'm cutting it too close, engages full automatic braking, jerking the car to sudden stop with a 10 foot gap

Oh so that’s what that is! That’s why Teslas are so annoying on the road.

It’s super dangerous when I’m motorcycling in rush hour traffic and cars in front of me unpredictably slam their brakes with plenty of room to go.

Another frustrating part is when you’re following 2 cars driving side-by-side on a curve and one of them keeps tapping their brakes because it thinks the car in the other lane is an obstacle. The lights come on and you’re never quite sure if it’s going to slam the brakes or just lightly tap them.

Usually this is a frustration because I’m trying to lane-split between the cars so I’m following at a relatively short distance and slowly getting closer.

I drive a Honda instead of a Tesla, but I have automatic emergency braking. I will say I've had it false trigger on completely empty and clear highway on several occasions, but any tap on the accelerator or brake will give me control.

I've had it beep at me while I was stopping behind vehicles before a handful of times, but it doesn't try to override me if I'm intentionally braking. There wasn't any actual threat of accident there anyway.

> There's a setting to disable that.

Are these types of settings (like seat position, etc.) per-driver in Teslas ?

I have the same experience in my honda. I've had it get ghost braking a few times, particularly when the highway is weird and there's temporary barriers.

But for the blinking BRAKE thing, I've almost completely gotten rid of that by just not following so closely. Now I can also regen brake more and I get better mileage.

I can adjust the sensitivity in a way that is persistent, but I believe the emergency braking feature has to be turned off manually for every drive? I'll double check, but I have turned it off several times.

As a fellow cyclist, I feel your pain. I learned to drive on cars that didn't even have ABS. I wish I could buy an electric car that was as dumb as a rock. It would be illegal to make and sell one, but maybe I'll build one when I retire. ;-)

I understand how we got here. I read a study somewhere several years ago that found that even in emergency situations, a significant percentage of drivers will not use more than roughly 60% of the braking force that would cause a lock-up or engage ABS. They brake harder than they ever have before, they just don't have any idea where the limit actually is.

The average person is a poor driver, so we increase overall safety by mandating automated systems that perform below the level of a skilled driver. Of course even skilled drivers make mistakes, and even if I could outperform the automated system 99 times out of 100, I wouldn't bet that I wouldn't get the book thrown at me if I were in an accident with the safety system disabled. Grin and bear it I suppose.

I have experienced some phantom/exaggerated auto-breaks but not so annoying/dangerous, while I have experienced another problem: parking. While I'm not leaving anymore in cities when I go there here in EU space is damn tight so it's pretty normal having to near-touching someone else bumper to been able to park, and well, an EV already tend to accelerate a bit too quickly for such maneuvering, the automatic break blocking the car too far from others it's a nightmare sometimes, could be disabled but re-enable itself so well... It's very annoying.

Depends on infrastructure and traffic conditions. My commute includes several on and off ramps that are routinely backed up somewhere between several blocks and several miles. If you are in line for the ramp, you can choose to A) maintain a gap no larger than one car-length between yourself and the car ahead of you or B) attempt to maintain a larger gap, only to have it immediately filled by people who were too important to join the back of the queue. In this case you are back to less than a one car-length gap, and the only thing you've accomplished is to annoy the people behind you by making space for queue jumpers. (You can of course repeat option B as many times as you like, until cars in queue behind you also start going around. I assume the end game is that you end up parked on the sidewalk or shoulder as traffic streams by.)