Adaptive cruise control breaking hard when no other vehicle in site

[Mnisjohn]

I've just joined, so please bear with me. I have an 18 month old Kodiaq. Last week I was driving along a dual carriageway with ACC set to 70mph. There were no other vehicles in front of me and none coming towards me on the other carriageway when my car braked hard; objects on the rear seat were thrown on the floor; the dash board indicator displayed BRAKE. If an HGV had been close behind I doubt that I would be writing this!

[TumnusCat]

So take it to the dealer to sort.

 

If you have a dashcam I would keep the relevant footage to show them.

[Jfhuk]

Where you near an airport by any chance? I’ve had something similar occur on the perimeter road at Heathrow when aircraft where landing.

[MyKodiaq168]

8 hours ago, Mnisjohn said:

I've just joined, so please bear with me. I have an 18 month old Kodiaq. Last week I was driving along a dual carriageway with ACC set to 70mph. There were no other vehicles in front of me and none coming towards me on the other carriageway when my car braked hard; objects on the rear seat were thrown on the floor; the dash board indicator displayed BRAKE. If an HGV had been close behind I doubt that I would be writing this!

 

Gees, my bear is also around 1.5 years old now, I'm also curious about this issue and how would it go?

[claudiu2patru]

I don't think it's an ACC problem, most likely the Front Assist took over because it sensed an imminent crash and activated the brakes with the Brake image appearing on the screen.

[silver1011]

The various sensors on the car aren't infallible.

 

Certain things can confuse the sensors, leaves and litter, reflective road signs etc.

 

The sensitivity of Front Assist can be reduced via the infotainment system if you're getting repeated false alerts.

[BoxerBoy]

Yesterday I had the Little Red Devil pop up 2 or 3 times during a 36 mile round trip on minor and urban roads.

No cruise control involved.

 

It seems to happen mostly for railings on the pavement, islands or parked cars, but the brakes never get applied.

 

I have it on most sensitive setting and just live with it in the hope it will save my bacon one day.

 

I’d be worried if it slammed on as per the OP’s event above.

[JohnHooper]

On 04/01/2019 at 08:18, BoxerBoy said:

Yesterday I had the Little Red Devil pop up 2 or 3 times during a 36 mile round trip on minor and urban roads.

No cruise control involved.

 

It seems to happen mostly for railings on the pavement, islands or parked cars, but the brakes never get applied.

 

I have it on most sensitive setting and just live with it in the hope it will save my bacon one day.

 

I’d be worried if it slammed on as per the OP’s event above.

Thanks for the post Boxerboy. The 'Little Red Devil' pops up and sudden breaking happens a bit too often in my Kodiaq too, and mostly for no apparent reason. What acceptable distance settings would 'desensitise' Front Assist to at least reduce the red devil, but not deactivate the feature completely? I.e. anyone know the factory distance setting?

Thanks, John

[JohnHooper]

3 hours ago, JohnHooper said:

Thanks for the post Boxerboy. The 'Little Red Devil' pops up and sudden breaking happens a bit too often in my Kodiaq too, and mostly for no apparent reason. What acceptable distance settings would 'desensitise' Front Assist to at least reduce the red devil, but not deactivate the feature completely? I.e. anyone know the factory distance setting?

Thanks, John

Update on the 'Little red devil' popping up too frequently problem, on the Skoda Kodiaq's Front Assist Infotainment function. I just changed the 'Advance Warning' function from close to medium and drove past a frequent trigger point: it didn't trigger the red devil or auto braking.

Thanks for the advice on this most helpful Skoda forum.

Edited 10 January, 2019 by JohnHooper

[NCC-74656]

That sounds scary @Mnisjohn . I think it is the front assist like what the others have said.  Did you get it fixed yet?  Separately- I think there should be a sensitivity setting for the front assist. My car often predicts impending doom, panics, assumes I'm snoozing and hits the brakes for me. It's like driving with a nervous passenger than you can't kick out.

[JohnHooper]

4 hours ago, NCC-74656 said:

That sounds scary @Mnisjohn . I think it is the front assist like what the others have said.  Did you get it fixed yet?  Separately- I think there should be a sensitivity setting for the front assist. My car often predicts impending doom, panics, assumes I'm snoozing and hits the brakes for me. It's like driving with a nervous passenger than you can't kick out.

Yes, I think so @Mnisjohn, by adjusting the Front Assist setting in 'Advance Warning' from 'close' to 'medium', as others suggested on here. I know what you mean by "like driving with a nervous passenger" when the Little Red Devil suddenly appears on the screen!

[silver1011]

[Mnisjohn]

On 02/01/2019 at 22:50, Jfhuk said:

Where you near an airport by any chance? I’ve had something similar occur on the perimeter road at Heathrow when aircraft where landing.

No, about six miles from the nearest.

[Mnisjohn]

On 03/01/2019 at 22:18, BoxerBoy said:

Yesterday I had the Little Red Devil pop up 2 or 3 times during a 36 mile round trip on minor and urban roads.

No cruise control involved.

 

It seems to happen mostly for railings on the pavement, islands or parked cars, but the brakes never get applied.

 

I have it on most sensitive setting and just live with it in the hope it will save my bacon one day.

 

I’d be worried if it slammed on as per the OP’s event above.

Thanks. In my case the "little red devil" didn't appear; what did show was the word BRAKE.

[Mnisjohn]

On 15/01/2019 at 03:51, JohnHooper said:

Yes, I think so @Mnisjohn, by adjusting the Front Assist setting in 'Advance Warning' from 'close' to 'medium', as others suggested on here. I know what you mean by "like driving with a nervous passenger" when the Little Red Devil suddenly appears on the screen!

Thanks; however it was not the "little red devil" that showed but the word BRAKE, I will take your suggestion though.

[silver1011]

Are you sure you didn't get the red image above, before 'BRAKE' appeared on the screen and the car automatically applied the brakes?

 

The manual isn't great, but as I read it the car will only brake automatically if the driver either ignores the red symbol above, or ignores a red symbol followed by an audible warning...

 

 

I had a 2018 Skoda Fabia courtesy car that applied the brakes automatically, but I'm pretty sure there was no advanced warning.

 

Edited 22 January, 2019 by silver1011

[MrTrilby]

3 hours ago, silver1011 said:

the car will only brake automatically if the driver either ignores the red symbol above, or ignores a red symbol followed by an audible warning...

 

It might be that the car didn’t give very long before it decided the driver was “ignoring” the symbol. 

 

Certainly with ACC if it decides you need to take action it will brake automatically without giving very much warning at all if it thinks it needs to. A classic is when using it on an A road and the car in front  pulls off to turn right in a protected lane in the middle of the road. You’re not going to hit it because it’s pulled into a lane to the right of you, but unless you cancel ACC when you see them begin the manoeuvre, or override by pressing the throttle, the auto brake will kick in and try and stop you. 

 

When that happens, in my experience the dashboard warnings and brake are very close together

[Mnisjohn]

20 hours ago, silver1011 said:

Are you sure you didn't get the red image above, before 'BRAKE' appeared on the screen and the car automatically applied the brakes?

 

The manual isn't great, but as I read it the car will only brake automatically if the driver either ignores the red symbol above, or ignores a red symbol followed by an audible warning...

 

I can't be sure as I was looking at the empty road ahead!

I had a 2018 Skoda Fabia courtesy car that applied the brakes automatically, but I'm pretty sure there was no advanced warning.

 

 

[silver1011]

There should have been an audible 'bong' too, but again this is my attempt at trying to understand the manual, which Skoda UK don't make easy.

[JohnHooper]

For the record, everytime that the 'red devil' automatic braking warning symbol used to frequently blast-up on my Kodiaq screen, it was certainly accompanied by a 'bong' sound signal - which made the semi-regular frequency event even more traumatic, when there was no visible 'immediate impact' event.

 

By adjusting the ACC, Front Assist setting in 'Advance Warning' distance, from 'close' to 'medium', has significantly decreased the frequency of this ghost signal (although a few weird ghost occurrences still occasionally occur), but I think (although not empirically measured),  the time gap between visual and sound warning has decreased since I reduced the ACC distance setting from 'close' to 'medium', i.e. giving the driver less time to respond (brake), before the audio signal sounded.

 

Nevertheless, I fully agree with other posters on this thread, that this feature should NOT be fully turned 'off' via the Infotainment System.

 

It certainly saved me from rear-ending another vehicle in fast but congested highway traffic last weekend, which if I had adjusted the ACC to 'far' (or 'distant', whatever), or to 'off', would have been 'probable', and hence catastrophic. 

 

This feature of the Skoda braking ACC really works!, so I recommend adjusting only the Front Assist distance setting, not turning it off.

 

Thanks again to Briskoda forum for clarifying issues where the Kodiaq Skoda manual is equivocally not clear.

[Yogi-Bear]

12 minutes ago, JohnHooper said:

so I recommend adjusting only the Front Assist distance setting, not turning it off.

 

+1 for this. Especially as some insurers (in the UK, at least) are now asking if you have front assist or similar, and discounting premiums slightly because it does reduce your chance of an accident. Turning it off could invalidate your policy if you have declared that you have it.

[Jfhuk]

On the couple of times it’s happened to me the ‘bong’ came at the same time as the brakes being slammed on. Since I moved the settings to medium it seems to be more well behaved, though I haven’t been around the Heathrow perimeter road to test yet.

[BoxerBoy]

On 23/01/2019 at 12:52, JohnHooper said:

.

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It certainly saved me from rear-ending another vehicle in fast but congested highway traffic last weekend, which if I had adjusted the ACC to 'far' (or 'distant', whatever), or to 'off', would have been 'probable', and hence catastrophic. 

 

This feature of the Skoda braking ACC really works!, so I recommend adjusting only the Front Assist distance setting, not turning it off.

.

.

 

 

That’s a heck of a confession.

 

Were you fiddling with your phone or your dashboard Apps? Or just eating your breakfast at 70? 

[MrTrilby]

1 minute ago, BoxerBoy said:

 

That’s a heck of a confession.

 

Were you fiddling with your phone or your dashboard Apps? Or just eating your breakfast at 70? 

 

That seems a bit rude. Have you never made a mistake, or misjudged the rate at which traffic in front is braking?

[BoxerBoy]

I wasn’t being rude.

 

Just an observation of one who admitted to almost running into the back of someone due to - for some reason - not keeping observation up front and taking appropriate action, thus relying on the unreliable Skoda system to hit the brakes.

 

Note - the thread kicked off discussing the unexpected operation, hence unreliable front assist system.