Had something strange happen on my 2020 ES350 UL today. My car was parked on the outside of the parking lot at a grocery store. I went to back out of the parking space and was about halfway out and the Collision Avoidance system slammed on the brakes very hard. I previously looked and didn't see any cars or pedestrians but checked again and saw nothing that would cause this. I pulled into the parking slot again and tried backing out a second time and it did the exact same thing again. This time I exited my car to look around and couldn't find anything that would cause this. I decided to turn off the car and try it again and the next time didn't have this problem. This is actually the first time I've had something like this happen to me with over 8K miles on the car. Is this just an isolated incident not to be concerned about and has this ever happened to anyone else?

 

My 2019 ES350 had and kind of still has a similar issue. When backing out of a space, it would do the exact same - come to a grinding halt if there was movement far away from the vehicle. It was very annoying since I would have to wait until an entire parking lot was literally at a standstill from any other vehicle or pedestrian movement. The dealer "adjusted" the sensitivity and it is better now but still way too sensitive. I seem to recall there is a setting that is user adjustable but it did nothing to help. The dealer had to do the programming.

 

I had that happen two times in the same lot, but that was the first and last time. Backing out, no car movement near me, just backed up too quickly and it sensed the parked car on the other side of the lane, and did a forced stop. Tried it again, same result.

Backed up very slowly, and it was fine. Better safe than sorry. The backup system has saved me from running over a step ladder that was outside the garage, and in the way.

Also, if I enter the garage too quickly, I get the red flag as I aim for the water heater.

 

I got the pedestrian image on my car backing out of the driveway and no one around. I put it down to water being on the camera... Then, at Home Depot, I was backing out slowly, no one near me, and some moron with a flat bed decided to try and get past before getting run over. The system worked perfectly, my insurance didn't go up, and the man lives today.

 

These sort of false postiives with these systems do happen. I had one really scary one in my 17 LS460L where it actually stopped completely on a highway offramp when I was going 70MPH. Luckily nobody was behind me. Ive also had false positives with the system that was on my 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee and my 2017 Chrysler Pacifica. Nothing yet on my Mercedes S560 or my 2020 Pacifica but they're young yet.

 

If I ever had my car stop suddenly while driving at 70MPH as SW17LS described, I would NEVER drive it again. It would somehow wind up in the bottom of a canal here in Miami where I live.

 

Dump it in the Miami River right near Mark Cuban's yacht IS that thing still docked there with the basketball court at the rear

 

Yeah it was pretty scary!

 

Thanks for all of your input. Glad to hear this is somewhat normal. The sensitivity settings are at factory default. I must say I am impressed with the Collision Avoidance system so far and feel much safer with it on.

 

carsareus - I would still suggest you bring your car to the Lexus dealer as I did to adjust the sensitivity. It helped for me. As I stated in my previous post, the sensitivity settings that are user adjustable did nothing for me. Whatever my Lexus dealer did made a considerable difference.