Decided to pick up a couple of bits from my local Tesco on Monday with the family. As I reversed out (slowly) I crunched the corner offside bumper on a metal ballard that was not in my line of sight.

My wife and I went to assess the damage which fortunately was around the "cat-eye" reflector that had shattered. A good polish and new cat-eye reflector should sort things out but I can't believe my rear-parking sensors failed me on this occasion. (They were fine straight afterward)

Anyone else experienced this?

Am pretty miffed as had just spruced her up for the winter with a full valet. (the car that is...)

What was the outside temp? How thick/tall was the obstacle?

Outside temp approx 12c Object 10cm wide by 1.2m tall (it was last monday!)

My neighbour's seemed to have a one off failure when he drove his towbar into the side of my classic Eunos Roadster (approx 1.2m x 3.2m):eek:

Ah, now thats gotta hurt!

Dont the sensors emit a beep when placed in reverse and show on the display?

If either of those dont happen then its an indication of a fault.

I feel for you though, I did pretty much the same in my old X-trail. Only seemed to tap the bollard and did £1000 worth of damage, the boot floor was creased WTF?

Steve

The key word is Parking Assistance

You still need to use your eyes occasionally.

Same thing happened to someone on the german vRS-board.

It seems they occasionally fail to work.

And he also got the same answer as above

Mine failed to work and I hit my neighbours car reversing off my drive!! Car 2 months old at the time.

I only use mine to get very close to objects I know are there whilst manouvering. They are clearly not infallable - I think you got to have a look yourself as well really.

I only use mine to get very close to objects I know are there whilst manouvering. They are clearly not infallable - I think you got to have a look yourself as well really.

I agree with you, but this do not justifies faults in parking system.

How ever to rely on the system if it does not work correctly.

Such failure leads to distrust in the system thereafter.

I did actually look in my rear view but the ballard must have been in a blind spot and that was that... I always use the system as an approx gauge of distance as it was designed for. I certainly have lost confidence in it and will be looking a lot closer in future. One of my right sensors was frozen this morning so continuous beep in reverse... I love technology.

I agree as above it's a parking aid so it's still up to you to check all is clear when moving your car. Failure of the sensor may be a horrible thing to happen but what if you hit a child instead because you failed to look? Parking sensors will not pick up every single object they also have blind spots.

I think some of the car parks deliberately have bollards that are just lower than the boot of your car. Fair enough you can see them if you drive into the space, but they suddenly vanish when reversing.

Mmm food for thought I guess. just collected a new cat eye for the offside rear bumper, got to get the little bit of paint tidied up now...

I've noticed that if I start reversing from 6ft plus away from object moving closer, then the sensors beep when I enage reverse then "forget" that they're supposed to be sensing and then suddenly go into the frantic beeps when I'm really close.

cheers,

Balham