riredale

My understanding is that many new cars have the ability to look ahead and either slow down for spacing or even do an emergency stop if traffic is stopped.

I visited my sister in Rhode Island last weekend and she drives a 2018 Subaru. She's always been a lousy driver, but this time she seemed to delay braking until the last second in traffic. When I (as usual) suggested she brake earlier, she made some comment about how the car can do its own braking and that she often has the car do just that.

Was she pulling my leg? Can a car brake to a stop without any driver intervention? Would it be a panic stop or is the car smart enough to brake firmly but smoothly?

LeX2K

Depends on the car and system some can automatically bring the car to a complete stop. But anyone using that as a normal part of their driving should have their license revoked.

tex2670

I think you should be more concerned if she is pulling your leg in that she actually doesn't bother driving safely because the car will take care of it for her. Yikes.

Here's a story about that feature on certain cars from C&D last fall:

https://www.caranddriver.com/feature...ted-explained/

Och

iTrader: (3)

This is why most people shouldn't really be allowed to drive.

IS350jet

If she has a Subaru with collision mitigation braking, it has Eyesight. Yes, if she uses Eyesight to stop, every stop will be a violent, full force, emergency braking stop. not good. I doubt she does that.

signdetres

My last Infiniti had a separate system from adaptive cruise control called Distance Control Assist. Just one button press on the steering wheel and it was enabled - you had to do this each time on start-up. It defaults to off, but it actually brakes the car to maintain a safe distance from the car in front, like adaptive cruise would, but without requiring a set speed and without controlling the accelerator pedal.

If the car in front stopped for a red light, it would also brake to an extremely smooth stop without the driver needing to do anything. It basically created a one-pedal driving type of setup because it worked so well. It behaved exactly like a human would, if not better those most human drivers. I loved it and used it quite a bit when my Q50S was new. It made for a very different type of driving experience. I don't often give Infiniti praise but if there's one thing they did well, it was tuning and programming that system.

It responded and reacted incredibly well to a variety of situations & even from quite a distance away. It was also a very communicative system between the display & a variety of beeps and chimes and pedal feedback. This also included a motorized gas pedal. So if you were driving along with your foot on the gas and the car in front began to slow down and you didn't respond by lifting off the gas, as you get closer the gas pedal would begin to push up on your foot to get your attention. You could either begin braking manually but once you lifted off the gas pedal, the car would begin braking on its own to match the car in front. It was seriously impressive tech & worked really well to freak out my passengers.

mmarshall

Not only that, but the repeated full-force braking will go through pads and rotors in a hurry, build up a lot of heat in the braking system, degrade the brake fluid, and warp the rotors (out-of-round) even before they physically wear down, causing a pulsating brake pedal.

pbm317

Again, more clarification needed of if she's using the EyeSight with Adaptive Cruise, which most of the Subarus it'll bring it to a stop (some of them can't hold indefinitely like other cars though) versus the Autonomous Emergency Braking, which is usually much more abrupt in nature.