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Comment by r00t4ccess | Hacker News Reader

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Vw golf r 2016 the sensor was low to the ground and it would randomly brake for stuff it thought was a threat like a cardboard box.

Subaru crosstrek 2018 - would brake for no reason, cars turning up ahead of me, etc.

VW atlas 2019 - brake for no reason would also scream at me and show a red symbol on the hud when nothing was in the road in front of me.

Subaru impreza 2023 - brakes for turning vehicles up the road, had it brake in a car wash.

On my vw vehicles i bought a can bus programmer so i could turn off as much if the safety stuff as possible because it made the car less safe to drive. In the impreza (current car) turning off the eyesight features is part of the pre-drive ritual.

I also had the lane assist on the crosstrek almost cause an accident on the highway at speed. Roads here are inconsistent and it was violently jerking the wheel trying to stay between lines.

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> Subaru crosstrek 2018 - would brake for no reason, cars turning up ahead of me, etc.

Another anecdote - I have the exact same car and haven't had it do anything unexpected. It would really help if Subaru et. al. had ways to offer feedback back to them, because experiences like yours should be shared with them so they can understand what kind of corner cases some drivers are getting into.

> I also had the lane assist on the crosstrek almost cause an accident on the highway at speed. Roads here are inconsistent and it was violently jerking the wheel trying to stay between lines.

I've also not experienced this - the lane assist is just a nudge and if it's overpowering you you should take it to the dealership, this is not normal.

I have the same car and my experience matches yours. Lane assist is just a tiny nudge, and I've never had the emergency braking kick in. I wonder what causes the different behavior?

To be fair I was going 70mph at the time. It could be a small nudge but at 70mph feels worse. I also had only owned the crosstrek for about 5 minutes at that point and I couldn’t figure out how to turn it off as well, didn’t realize buttons were placed on the ceiling.

It was actually my first experience with the car, it happened on my way from the dealership to the office. It also didn’t help that I owneed the vehicle for 5 minutes at that point and could not find the button to disable it. I have since gotten rid of the car.

There is a hardware button on Subarus to disable EyeSight when you go through the car wash.

Anecdotal, but the alarm before the auto braking in my Crosstrek (2020) saved me two times. And I was in the car with a friend who activated the auto braking when they had just purchased it and weren't used to driving it.

Yeah its part of my pre-drive procedure since it happened. I’ve never had any of my vehicles auto brake in a way that was helpful.

Why not get a car without that stuff?

I got what was available at the time. The golf r is low production car finding one to buy was hard enough.

The crosstrek the only orange one available had eyesight.

The atlas was used so there was only 1 option locally

The impreza its standard on anything over base, and the base was missing other things i wanted.

Ok, that makes sense. I just bought a 1997 car and had it rebuilt, about 30% of the price of a new one and none of the crap, roughly just as safe as the current ones and much less likely to be stolen. Not the most economical decision because of course it is still a 1997 car but it will hold its value well enough that I'm not worried about it and I'm not really planning on selling it anyway. But if I ever do crash it then I'll probably lose a bunch of money because the present day value is less than what I put into it. Otoh just the write-off on a new one would have been roughly the total invested.

It's very frustrating how tech can be mis-applied. But I also see the regulators point of applied statistics and that even if these systems cause the occasional crash they prevent a much larger number from ever happening.

That's becoming increasingly harder as EuroNCAP mandates more and more of these as standard technologies that must be included. Manufacturers would much rather build one car and modify it as little as possible for all intended markets. So they design them with American and Chinese expectations for size, appearance, and features, and with European expectations for safety and emissions systems. We already can't buy new cars without rear cameras or forward emergency warning for that very reason.

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