I owned a 2017 Superb Mk III and recently swapped to a Mk IV and love the car apart from one very dangerous fault. Occasionally, the car decides I’m about to hit something and slams on the brakes - so hard, that you think you have hit something!

It has happened several times whilst manoeuvering at low speed in reverse which is somewhat disquieting. But it has also recently done it whilst driving forwards - in no way on any occasion was there a risk of collision with either stationary or mobile obstructions. Twice whilst turning left into a side street outside my house after pulling away from the kerb, and once whilst approaching a roundabout at approx 20mph. The latter one could have caused an accident if the person behind had not been paying attention. I wonder how an insurance company would react, especially if an accusation of ‘brake checking’ were made by the person behind.

I can put up with the red flashing warning and beep for front assist and the parking sensors when reversing, but I would dearly love to permanently (or even temporarily) disable the automatic braking. Is there any way to do this and if not is there a contact at Skoda that I can contact to put the case?

I think this is a dangerous feature that has not been properly developed and it will cause collisions, quite aside from inducing cardiac arrest in driver and occupants of the car!

It spoils what is otherwise a very fine and capable car.

Drew

Edited 4 February4 Feb by iamdrew
Spelling mistake

In 7 months with the Superb so far, mine's only done this twice - both times while reversing at low speed (walking pace or less). Once it was the car being over-cautious about the proximity of a low brick wall. The second time it was some long grass behind one of the sensors 😆

I've had the same issue, once in forward gear, exiting a small roundabout within a right hand curved 30mph road, there were pedestrians on the footpath, which obviously caused the severe braking. I think the fact that the road curve meant the forward looking cameras projected to the footpath was the instigator. Not had this issue since. Also, like you, had it happen in reverse multiple times at low speed, not so much severe braking but violent braking, you really feel like you've hit an object. So bad that wife refuses to drive the car at all, which may not be a bad thing really 😇

It’s a fairly widespread issue, and I’m increasingly convinced most of the false positives are due to some delay in the system. Not so much from sensors or the message bus, but from a controller/s or some post-processing and decision logic. The sensors clearly have awareness of trajectory relevance and steering angle, and the system might be performing additional object classification before acting.

In many cases, emergency braking activates moments after a potential event has already occurred - when encountering a curb, a vehicle in the blind spot, or while reversing. The system also appears to behave more aggressively when a passenger does not have their seatbelt. I correlate this to the noticeable delay in both front and rear cameras. If cameras are used in any of these decisions, that could be part of the culprit.

As others have observed, lightly pressing the brake in tight spaces helps, but this is obviously not a practical workaround when the system triggers unexpectedly on straight roads, roundabouts...

That's quite a speculation, but in any case, I seriously doubt this will ever get fixed ad-hoc.

The system just saved me from hitting another car, I was going back from parking and didn't look if anyone was coming and it was but the system anticipated it and brealed for me. Impressive, I'm happy to know it exists.

I have a feeling the car also detects if you are nor 100% concentrating on what you are doing. This has happened to me 3 times and in each case my sttention was distracted whilst reversing at very low speed

20 minutes ago, YMe said:

I have a feeling the car also detects if you are nor 100% concentrating on what you are doing. This has happened to me 3 times and in each case my sttention was distracted whilst reversing at very low speed

Absolutely, I've noticed the same, and it's been quite useful. The "eye sensors" seem pretty accurate. They can catch you even when you’re almost looking straight ahead 😄. The safety features are very welcome, @Badelhas , though I'm questioning the implementation (and others, same complaints in the Passat B9 groups and forums). So... make as much noise as possible to increase the chances of this being fixed retroactively, not just in a future facelift

eye sensors? Where are they?

Built into the instrument panel - at the right lighting angle you can see two dots around 3-4mm in diameter that are slightly different to the rest of the panel.

11 hours ago, EC73LDN said:

Built into the instrument panel - at the right lighting angle you can see two dots around 3-4mm in diameter that are slightly different to the rest of the panel.

So what if you block these sensors, could this alter the emergency brake system? Unlikely, but it's worth the try

Yesterday, after a very entertaining match at Hereford (who won for a change). Across the road that I was about to turn onto out of the car park was a young family with a girl of about 7 years old, patiently waiting for the pedestrian light to change, I drove slowly out of the carpark the girl just turned around to her Mum, the Superb stopped dead in the middle of the road.

Later on the A49 cruise control on, I kept getting messages to Take control of the wheel (or similar) this was despite me haveing both hands on the wheel at all time and looking forward out of the windscreen. Later on the M4 it became every minute or so I was getting the message if I failed to add input to the wheel despite my hands firmly holding it, a couple of seconds later I got the warning sound I moved my hands then, having the Harvard lights come on and the car braking to a stop wasn’t going to be fun. I switched it off then I’d had enough. Maybe it couldn’t see my eyes at night wearing normal clear lens glasses and as the roads have long straights I wasn’t doing much in the way of inputs.

Who knows, if it carries on in the dark I will just stop using it.

Sounds like an issue with the steering wheel... I believe some have capacitative sensors in the wheel to detect you are holding it and some have had issues.

On 04/02/2026 at 19:30, iamdrew said:

I owned a 2017 Superb Mk III and recently swapped to a Mk IV and love the car apart from one very dangerous fault. Occasionally, the car decides I’m about to hit something and slams on the brakes - so hard, that you think you have hit something!

It has happened several times whilst manoeuvering at low speed in reverse which is somewhat disquieting. But it has also recently done it whilst driving forwards - in no way on any occasion was there a risk of collision with either stationary or mobile obstructions. Twice whilst turning left into a side street outside my house after pulling away from the kerb, and once whilst approaching a roundabout at approx 20mph. The latter one could have caused an accident if the person behind had not been paying attention. I wonder how an insurance company would react, especially if an accusation of ‘brake checking’ were made by the person behind.

I can put up with the red flashing warning and beep for front assist and the parking sensors when reversing, but I would dearly love to permanently (or even temporarily) disable the automatic braking. Is there any way to do this and if not is there a contact at Skoda that I can contact to put the case?

I think this is a dangerous feature that has not been properly developed and it will cause collisions, quite aside from inducing cardiac arrest in driver and occupants of the car!

It spoils what is otherwise a very fine and capable car.

Drew

I've had the exact same problem in very similar situations. I live in a city with chaotic traffic (Florence), which certainly wasn't even remotely conceived in the minds of whoever designed the system. With the old Octavia III, I never had a problem reversing with the classic sensors; when needed, it braked just in time. But with the Superb, it was stressful. My three-year-old daughter was in the car, and she was terrified by a seemingly unprovoked braking. Not to mention the new brakes, which I don't think appreciate these violent brakings during the break-in process. For now, I deactivate the collision sensor as soon as I get in the car. It's simply dangerous. It seems absurd to me that I can't control such an immature option. And it ****es me off because the car is wonderful if it weren't for this bull****.

how do you deactivate the collision sensor?

On your screen, there should be an icon of the rear of your car with brackets( ) around it click on that it will open the options, the front collision is on there - however you need to un select it every time you switch on the ignition - currently there is NO alternative or ability to switch it off forever 😵‍💫