[karaterobot]

Not the person you were responding to, but here's an anecdatum:

One time I was driving behind someone under otherwise normal conditions, and they turned right into a parking lot. As they turned right, they obviously began exiting the road. The screen on my car screamed "BRAKE!" and then the braking system activated. They were about 60% of the way into the parking lot, and continuing to exit. I was at a normal following distance, going a normal speed, and they were just making a right into a parking lot. This was a very ordinary situation, and the emergency warning was unexpected.

Now, technically, if that car had completely stopped for some reason instead of continuing to exit, I guess I could have hit the back corner of the bumper. That is, if I hadn't, you know, shifted a couple feet to the left to avoid it.

Ironically, the emergency braking alarm was so distracting that it might have caused me to hit the car in front of me if the brakes hadn't activated, and if I had needed to steer to avoid an accident.

And if the person behind me hadn't seen my brakes suddenly activate, they might have hit me. Or, if the person behind them hadn't seen their brakes activate, they might have hit them. And so on.

[bgentry]

I've had this exact situation happen on numerous occasions. It's always people turning into a parking lot ahead of me, in a situation where they will absolutely be out of the way long before I reach them, but also I'm actively shifting to the side to go clearly around them anyway. In none of the situations was there any chance of an accident even if the turning car stopped suddenly instead of completing its turn. And this has happened to me on multiple different vehicles.

Each time it happens my immediate reaction is "what the hell is wrong with my car" before I see the "BRAKE" on the dash or heads up display and realize this happened yet again. I'm surprised I haven't been rear ended on account of it yet.

[lsaferite]

I fully understand that frustration, but I would point out that continuing through the departure zone like that at full speed is prone to accidents with another car entering the road in that blind spot and you should adjust accordingly. Additionally, following the car in front of you so close that you hit them if they brake suddenly is inherently dangerous and a bad habit as well. Interestingly enough, a universal AEB requirement on all vehicles would help in that scenario.

[ics]

It's fair to say that some percentage of cases could be avoided by driving more defensively but I doubt it is significant. There are plenty of scenarios that the systems simply can't handle gracefully such as narrow or shifting lanes (my experience). The safest solution might be to avoid such roads entirely but then I'd never be able to leave my borough.

[hedora]

Road throughput is inversely proportional to following distance, so if everyone doubles their following distance to account for / avoid spurious automatic emergency braking, then we’d need to double the number of lanes to keep road capacity constant, which would lead to more lane changes, and therefore accidents.

If, instead, we kept the roads the same, then congestion would increase, and with it, accidents.

There is a reason that random unexpected emergency braking is a favorite tactic for people attempting to force accidents in order to commit insurance fraud: It’s too expensive for everyone to change their habits in order to guard against it.

[vkou]

If we care about reducing following distance, we should be lowering speed limits. A car doing 60 needs a much longer safer braking distance than one doing 45.

Also, if you are following at a distance where an AEB activation will cause you to rearend the vehicle in front of you, you are too close to safely follow any vehicle, regardless of whether it has an AEB.

[HPsquared]

Depending on where you live, if you leave a big gap someone else will just fill that space and you're back to the "short following distance" mode again. Rinse and repeat...

[vkou]

And then when the car in front has to tap the brakes for whatever reason, the tailgater has to slam them to avoid a collision, the person tailgating them also slams theirs, and you get a wave of braking propagating backwards, eventually creating a traffic jam.

[Merad]

To be honest it sounds like you're making a damned good argument in favor of mandatory AEB. You're risking a collision because you assume that the car that's turning will behave in the way you expect it to behave (no judgement, I usually do it too). If you're wrong there's a high risk of a multi-car accident because naturally all the drivers in line behind you are tailgating.

[bentcorner]

I've had this happen too but after the first few times I understand why it's doing it and try not to follow too closely in these situations.