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by garyrichardson 1310 days ago
I have a 2018 VW Atlas and its automated braking system has done the right thing 99.9% of the time. It's definitely saved me from 5-6 accidents -- being cut off a number of times, a racoon jumping in front of my car, and that one time my attention waned.

My Tesla, on the other hand, get's it right about 10% of the time. I wanted to type a higher percentage, but phantom breaking happens so often. The number of times I've seen the red X on the atlas in the entire time owning it is about the number of times the M3 loses its mind on a monthly basis.

The other interesting thing: I could probably write the algorithm for the adaptive cruise control on the Atlas. It's so predictable that I know exactly what it's going to do in reaction to traffic around me. If a car ahead of me slows down, I slow down at a constant rate. If the car speeds up, I know exactly how much it's going to speed up. Same with people changing lanes ahead of me, etc.

The M3 OTOH feels like a buggy machine learning model. I have no idea why it's at the current speed it's at. If I set it to 120KM/H and there's no car in front of me the chances of it being 120KM/H is about 30%. If a car pulls away from and my car should speed up there is no rhyme or reason to when and how quickly it speeds up.

All that being said, I'd still take the Tesla automated braking over nothing at this point. Reading the other posts, it sounds like VW is doing something right.