Front Assist Advice

[awhitham]

I collected my new Octavia yesterday. It came with Front Assist and ACC. The ACC works great so the Radar system must be working well. The Front Assist is switched on with all options ticked on the menu system. I can't quite work out whether the Front Assist hardly does anything or it would only break or warn VERY Late (which I don't dare try!)

 

Has anyone else got Front Assist on their Octavia and either find it breaks or responds VERY late (or the opposite?)

 

Thanks - Adam

[kallekilponen]

I've only had it react once, and that was when approaching a stopped vehicle at an unusually high speed. It seems to be adjusted to avoid false positives.

[sworrall]

it will only respond at the extreme so you'll hopefully not see the red demon popping up for a few months yet.

 

Mine triggered the other day when a van in lane 1 started drifting into lane two as I was passing him.  He was only about 4-6 inches over the white line so its very good.(he moved back after I got my red bleep and the auto dab on the breaks to warn me)

[Garnett]

Being down here in Devon with lots of country lanes, I must have seen it activate 10 times in six weeks. Never in a situation where there was a potential for collision that I wasn't already dealing with. Just to be clear, the break assist does not brake for you. When it detects the potential for an emergency stop. It alarms and makes the screen go red. It also primes the breaking system to maximum pressure and sets the ABS up according to the distance and speed giving you the best chance of braking before a collision if you hit the pedal.

 

Under cruise control is does decelerate and use braking. However if it needs some more aggressive braking (somebody pulled out in front of me on the motorway), it tells you to brake manually rather than do it for you.

 

Hope that makes sense? 

[Iamholam]

That's a bit disappointing... I was hoping it would brake for me in situations where I would not have reacted in time.

[999pooch]

That's a bit disappointing... I was hoping it would brake for me in situations where I would not have reacted in time.

It wiil

I have the same system in the Golf, & twice at low speed it has just beaten me to the brake pedal.

Both times at low speeds where the car in front has braked sharply & I already had my foot on the brake. The system beeped & red alert on screen & brake pedal goes down. I then took over with a good prod on the pedal and brought the car to a full stop

TBH I would have had adequate time to do everything manually, but reassuring to know it all works

[999pooch]

Being down here in Devon with lots of country lanes, I must have seen it activate 10 times in six weeks. Never in a situation where there was a potential for collision that I wasn't already dealing with. Just to be clear, the break assist does not brake for you. When it detects the potential for an emergency stop. It alarms and makes the screen go red. It also primes the breaking system to maximum pressure and sets the ABS up according to the distance and speed giving you the best chance of braking before a collision if you hit the pedal.

Under cruise control is does decelerate and use braking. However if it needs some more aggressive braking (somebody pulled out in front of me on the motorway), it tells you to brake manually rather than do it for you.

Hope that makes sense?

Front Assist will brake for you at low speeds

[Bindinbear]

Mine is missing the grille trim piece (factory error) and mine reacts late imo or when i can more than adequately stop in time it goes off falsely. The trim piece might make a diffference in its field of vision though. No acc on mine though

[philwoodphoto]

I've had mine go off a few times. A couple of beeps and once I felt the brakes kidder as I put my foot on it. So far it has only done this when I'm approaching a car turning left where I can see they will be out of the way in time.

Found out another warning which is nice to see it is aware of... If you are doing more than 60kph and you get a little close (not really close) you get a distance warning where the odometer is (on maxidot), two cars with an exclamation mark between them. No sounds though, I guess if I got even closer it would start yelling at me.

[kallekilponen]

Front Assist will brake for you at low speeds

My understanding is that at low speeds it will brake at the last second to avoid a collision and at higher speeds use the brakes to mitigate the repercussions of an unavoidable collision.

[Garnett]

There a post on here somewhere from Youtube where somebody drives a new Skoda at a large box covered in aluminium foil to prove the system. There was nothing left of the box at the end! The system has to balance priorities and risk. Anecdotally a plastic bag was blown up on the motorway causing an emergency stop when this was introduced. Clearly this had huge potential for a serious rear end shunt.

 

The red warning is reasonably common, but when I deliberately pushed it in active cruise control it used the brakes, but also warned that I would need to intervene myself and brake which I did. Above a certain speed it does not emergency stop unless you ask for it.

 

Garnett

[manlms]

I collected my new Octavia yesterday. It came with Front Assist and ACC. The ACC works great so the Radar system must be working well. The Front Assist is switched on with all options ticked on the menu system. I can't quite work out whether the Front Assist hardly does anything or it would only break or warn VERY Late (which I don't dare try!)

 

I think that if you use ACC all the time, it brakes early enough and the Front Assist probably does not come into the picture at all.

Edited 15 April, 2015 by manlms

[Redboy]

It is not perfect, it is a useful aid. Recently I have had the brakes activate as a car turned to my left into a side road. I was fully aware and ready to brake as my "computer" had done the maths and still considered it to be safe. Conversely this morning a van left it vey late to commit and unexpectedly pulled out and just managed to cross in front of me as I approached. The system ignored it. As I gain more experience with this aid it has crossed my mind that potentially you could get rear ended quite easily if the system makes the wrong calculation and slams on the anchors unexpectedly.

[Makefish]

Bit of a dumb ass question, but do the brake lights come on when the front assist is active with no input from the driver? 

 

Also interested to know if the brake lights come on when using ACC at higher speeds as I've noticed braking input when approaching slower moving traffic?

[bouff34]

Bit of a dumb ass question, but do the brake lights come on when the front assist is active with no input from the driver? 

 

Also interested to know if the brake lights come on when using ACC at higher speeds as I've noticed braking input when approaching slower moving traffic?

Yes, they do...

[Gabbo]

As I gain more experience with this aid it has crossed my mind that potentially you could get rear ended quite easily if the system makes the wrong calculation and slams on the anchors unexpectedly.

 

I think for this reason, the front assist function doesn't allow for full braking force.

For a full emergency stop I believe the driver has to press the brake pedal fully.

Pressing the accelerator further will probably also override the braking also (like it does with ACC)

 

Conversely, it can quite easily stop you from rear-ending someone, when the car turning left suddenly stops in the road because a pedestrian is crossing.

This is very common in Europe where pedestrians & cyclists have priority crossing a minor road over the car turning into it.

[citembe]

I had it activating the brakes two times driving down a steep entrance to a parking basement. Just a little too quick down the ramp and it activates because of the oncoming basement floor.

I have had the warning go off maybe 10-12 times in traffic, and activation of the brakes perhaps 3-4 times in the 15 months I have had my car.

[Panther_uk]

Just to be clear, the break assist does not brake for you. When it detects the potential for an emergency stop. It alarms and makes the screen go red. It also primes the breaking system to maximum pressure and sets the ABS up according to the distance and speed giving you the best chance of braking before a collision if you hit the pedal.

 

 

The brochure would dispute this, as it claims it will brake for you bringing the car to a standstill if necessary

[andyvee]

It does brake for you, I had someone unexpectedly stop in front of me in traffic and it slammed on before I could react.

[999pooch]

It does brake for you, I had someone unexpectedly stop in front of me in traffic and it slammed on before I could react.

Yep, as I described earlier it definitely does

[pipsyp]

Like everything....a useful safety aid but not something to be relied upon or be any kind of substitute for human decision making.

I was a bit annoyed that when I bought my Elegance it had literally just been removed from standard spec but like most things if youve never had it you dont really miss it. I also think it'd pee me off at times too, particularly if floating debris like carrier bags are enough to send it loopy.

[Greg R]

Not had any issues with debris etc so far but i do find the ACC a bit over cautious when it comes to cars changing lanes etc.. It can take some time to realise when the lane is clear and to accelerate back to the set speed

Snet with speeling mistkaes from my phoen

[drum]

Two eyes and a right foot work much better in my opinion

[borchgrevink]

Tried to place some soft items on the road today to trigger it. Nothing happened. I was driving in about 10-15 kph. Maybe the items were too small or too soft? 

[kfckfc]

The items need to be large and metallic