Volkswagen Tiguan death trap

Grumpy_chap

The speed / brake assist features can quite commonly "see" things as hazards that a human driver would not.  This is irrespective of make of car.
In my car, one of the things that is often incorrectly identified as a hazard is the oncoming traffic crossing the white line.  So, it is correctly seen by the car, but the car is not able to interpret what has been seen the same way as I do - I can see that the cars in my lane are all to the left and the cars coming towards me are all over the line because of parked cars.

TELLIT01

@Grumpy_chap People can make all the excuses they like for the system activating when it shouldn't.  On the one and only time it happened to me it was on a dead straight section of road with no other traffic, no high hedges or anything else for it to identify as a risk.  It's a road I travel on almost daily and it has never happened again.  There often are parked cars, but it's never even beeped a warning at me for those.

I could disable it, but if I did I'd have an annoying warning light permanently on the dash.  Sometimes you just can't win.

prowla

Grumpy_chap said:

The speed / brake assist features can quite commonly "see" things as hazards that a human driver would not.  This is irrespective of make of car.
In my car, one of the things that is often incorrectly identified as a hazard is the oncoming traffic crossing the white line.  So, it is correctly seen by the car, but the car is not able to interpret what has been seen the same way as I do - I can see that the cars in my lane are all to the left and the cars coming towards me are all over the line because of parked cars.

Yes, it can miss-see things which you know aren't a hazard, for example there's a spot along my road with a central reservation and typically cars parked to the left just after; the car thinks I'm heading straight for them rather than being totaly in control and going to pull out and pass them after the bollards.

TELLIT01 said:

@Grumpy_chap People can make all the excuses they like for the system activating when it shouldn't.  On the one and only time it happened to me it was on a dead straight section of road with no other traffic, no high hedges or anything else for it to identify as a risk.  It's a road I travel on almost daily and it has never happened again.  There often are parked cars, but it's never even beeped a warning at me for those.

I could disable it, but if I did I'd have an annoying warning light permanently on the dash.  Sometimes you just can't win.

I don't think the post you replied to there was making excuses, but rather pointing out the inadequacies of the system.

GDB2222

I’m thinking of getting a new car, as mine is 19 years old, and it has none of these gadgets. I was hoping the new one will have lots of driving aids, like automatic emergency brake, and you have no idea how despondent this thread has made me.

Which? did an article about this, and they say that a lot of drivers are unhappy about this. They didn’t say which cars, if any, have pretty good systems. I can well understand that the OP is upset, and yet the OP’s car is apparently not faulty. 

TELLIT01

@Grumpy_chap Surely if the automatic system misinterprets an object and reacts, it cannot be seeing things correctly.  The statement simply makes no sense.

GDB2222

Generally, computer programs come with lengthy terms and conditions that deny liability for errors. There are frequent bugs, and we accept that some of them seriously impact the performance of the software. 

All these new gadgets on cars have very complicated programming at the heart of them. So, do cars have the same terms and conditions denying liability for the inevitable errors? 

Grumpy_chap

TELLIT01 said:

@Grumpy_chap Surely if the automatic system misinterprets an object and reacts, it cannot be seeing things correctly.  The statement simply makes no sense.

Yes, but the car is seeing things correctly.
You have a road in an urban setting with one lane in each direction of travel.
There is a central lane marker painted.
The car sees the vehicles in the oncoming lane crossing over the lane marker.
The car then interprets that as the oncoming traffic veering across from the correct side of the road to the incorrect side of the road.
What the car is not intelligent enough to see and interpret is the row of parked cars on the opposite side of the road, so it simply reacts to the oncoming traffic veering across the lane marker.

What the human drivers have done is to drive along towards the left hand side of the lane, which then means that the flow of oncoming traffic can cross the central lane marker, thus avoiding the parked cars, and also allowing traffic to flow in both directions.

In my car, once you know, you spot these events before they happen and the manual over-ride is to touch the accelerator very slightly.

born_again

TELLIT01 said:

@Grumpy_chap Surely if the automatic system misinterprets an object and reacts, it cannot be seeing things correctly.  The statement simply makes no sense.

Leaf blowing across the road, sun reflecting of a shinny surface can all cause false events.
Having a Kia I know fore well that if a car goes down a slip road & you speed up to pass, there is more chance of it kicking in than anywhere else. 

Ergates

Grumpy_chap said:

The speed / brake assist features can quite commonly "see" things as hazards that a human driver would not.  This is irrespective of make of car.
In my car, one of the things that is often incorrectly identified as a hazard is the oncoming traffic crossing the white line.  So, it is correctly seen by the car, but the car is not able to interpret what has been seen the same way as I do - I can see that the cars in my lane are all to the left and the cars coming towards me are all over the line because of parked cars.

The sensor in my car goes of every now and then - I think it's only been "correct" twice.  Most of the time its on corners - where it sees a car straight ahead that I am, technically, driving straight towards, except I'm not really because the road bends.

Fortunately, it's not connected to the brakes and just pings at me.

Ergates

Alderbank said:

You describe it as 'Tiguan death trap' but could it also be described as 'Tiguan Front-Assist Emergency Brake Applied Unprompted'?

If so, it's a very common topic on VW forums. It's not a fault, the system is designed to apply the brakes if it thinks a pedestrian or cyclist is too close for safety. The radar sensor for it is in the VW roundel on the front of the car. Some drivers claim that polishing the sensor makes a difference.

A car suddenly applying the brakes when it is unexpected and unnecessary sounds like a fault to me - a potentially dangerous one.