Sudden automatic braking issue (merged, MG4)

YaR said:

I believe the software and firmware is likely the same, but the issue is that the climate, sunlight and roads are very different and the system has essentially been built for an environment where roads are wide, without narrow bends, and don't have dappled shadows from trees or frequent patches of drizzle, mist and fog.

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Also faded and bad road markings , pot holes , open ditches and poor repairs.

Take note MG and others.... Fiat has a physical button to turn off the assists

Normally, this means using this button the FIAT won't drive another mile....

meveringham said:

I don't understand why everyone is so nonchalant about this! It just happened to me (I'll remove my post, didn't see this one before!) and it's potentially incredibly dangerous. If it had happened at any higher speed than it just did for me, and there was a vehicle following behind, the chances are that they would have driven right into the back of me.

I've disabled the function now (also ludicrous that you need to do so each time, it should remember the setting) but that is wholly unacceptable IMO.

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I completely agree with your post, this is such a serious issue. I have MG4 and the vehicle has done an emergency stop on several occassions on one of these it was so forceful it jolted me forward
on the A13 (extremely busy road) and I honestly don't know how the lorry behind me stopped in time there was nothing directly in front of me but the car just stopped after a amber phone showed up and within a second changed to red phone with wording "refer to handbook"
and then it cut out, the car then restarted within about 5 seconds and I was left shaking at how dangerous the situation was
I am so nervous about driving this car and avoid motorways as I have lost all confidence in the vehicle
It has gone back to MG for repairs 3 times now and on the last occassion I was told "it will do this when updates are required and apparently there were 11 updates needed" WTH
On another issue it bleeps constantly and pulls if driving in right hand lane
I am looking to change the vehicle but am worried that any electric car will have the same problems

tsedge said:

Unfortunately this is the state of AEB across most manufacturers at the moment. They rush to add it for the NCAP points but the technology is immature.

You can switch it off.

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PLEASE how do you switch this off

Xpower is now in towing mode as it usually triggers about once a week.

ID3 we had for 3 years before did it maybe twice over the entire period

MG3 Hybrid we had as a loan car for 3 weeks - not once (and the LKA was much better)

There are a couple of ways but you may not like the answer because it turns off other functions you may like. Enable Towing Mode , turns off emergency braking and LKA, also rear parking sensors and ACC. ........ Cover the camera aperture on the windscreen, gives warning triangle and messages ,ignore. Stops the above but keeps rear parking sensors. Both these methods stay on as default.
Get all the latest updates and cross your fingers.

Snowy said:

I completely agree with your post, this is such a serious issue. I have MG4 and the vehicle has done an emergency stop on several occassions on one of these it was so forceful it jolted me forward
on the A13 (extremely busy road) and I honestly don't know how the lorry behind me stopped in time there was nothing directly in front of me but the car just stopped after a amber phone showed up and within a second changed to red phone with wording "refer to handbook"
and then it cut out, the car then restarted within about 5 seconds and I was left shaking at how dangerous the situation was
I am so nervous about driving this car and avoid motorways as I have lost all confidence in the vehicle
It has gone back to MG for repairs 3 times now and on the last occassion I was told "it will do this when updates are required and apparently there were 11 updates needed" WTH
On another issue it bleeps constantly and pulls if driving in right hand lane
I am looking to change the vehicle but am worried that any electric car will have the same problems

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If it is happening too often, get the dealer to fix it. But for now, go to central infotainment system, settings, pilot menu. Scroll down until you see the forward collision system switch. My advise: leave it on but chose the alert option underneath it.
But now it is on you to do an emergency braking. The system will only warn you.

Alternatively, keep AEB on, chose lowest sensitivity and test it for a while.

You can switch just about everything off but as it must be on by default to get the 5 star NCAP rating you have to do this every time you drive as all the safety systems must be activated by default when the car is started.

My car was built in June 2023 & on the road since September 23 & I have never had any emergency type sudden braking issues & have covered 22,000km so far. Latest software updates seem to have fixed or reduced the problems. LKA & other NCAP safety features are complained about for almost all brands both ICE & EV by various owners.

Corindikev said:

LKA & other NCAP safety features are complained about for almost all brands both ICE & EV by various owners.

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Which? said

"Is the MG4's lane assist worse than other cars?

Our lab has noted issues with the lane-keep assistance and lane-departure warning systems with other cars, but none displayed behaviour like we saw with the MG4."

What year, build, software version and model? Mine doesn't have the problem so I suspect it has later software.

Corindikev said:

You can switch just about everything off but as it must be on by default to get the 5 star NCAP rating you have to do this every time you drive as all the safety systems must be activated by default when the car is started.

My car was built in June 2023 & on the road since September 23 & I have never had any emergency type sudden braking issues & have covered 22,000km so far. Latest software updates seem to have fixed or reduced the problems. LKA & other NCAP safety features are complained about for almost all brands both ICE & EV by various owners.

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Then you are lucky. Maybe one of the many mg4 drivers. And in fact, in my car it is not AEB itself at fault. It is the buggy triggering of ACC that causes me to occasionaly get another scare.
But even if only a few experienced the dead sudden full lock of the brakes without ANY reason, you may understand their frustration? Or the passenger next to the driver?

From another perspective, just take a look at the list MG provides when this particular system does not work well:
• The vehicle ahead approaches head-on, crosses the intersection or jumps the queue rapidly in a short distance. • The vehicle ahead does not follow the rules of driving and parking (such as drives on the lane lines). • The vehicle ahead is not in the same lane as your vehicle or the vehicle ahead is partially obscured. • The vehicle ahead is an abnormal vehicle (modified or abnormal shape). • The vehicle ahead is a vehicle with higher chassis. • The vehicle ahead is a large vehicle at close range (such as tractor, trailer, towing vehicle, mud truck, sanitation truck, sprinkler truck etc.). • The vehicle ahead is unusual transportation (such as a horse, cart, carriages etc.). • The system detects the side of a vehicle. • The contour of the vehicle ahead is unclear (such as water being sprayed by the wheels of the front and surrounding vehicles). • The vehicle ahead does not have or has obscured tail lamps when driving at night or in a tunnel. • The taillamps of the vehicle ahead are all LEDstrip lights or other homemade coloured lamps. • The street lights are inconsistent or flickering when driving at night. • The pedestrian is not directly in front of the vehicle, or the pedestrian is not fully visible. • The pedestrian is not standing upright, or it is a child under a certain height. • There is a group of pedestrians in front of the vehicle that is over-shadowed or in the dark. • There are animals in front of the vehicle.• Objects such as special-shaped ground obstacles (e.g. roadblocks, isolation piles, isolation strips, large stones, other scattered objects etc.) are detected in front of the vehicle. • Objects such as signs, guardrails, bridges, buildings or other are detected in front of the vehicle. • The vehicle is being driven on a hillside road, upper and lower bridge section or tight bend. • The vehicle is in R. • The vehicle is in a state of braking or rapid acceleration.

I would say: if it does not work or works only poorly that often, at least you need a button somewhere to quickly disable it..... Not something hidden deep down in the menu. And certainly not in a menu of a central screen placed that far aside so it makes you look sideways 'to hit the right switch' on a poorly functioning touch screen.... while driving.
(same for LKA and ACC btw)

It takes 5-10 seconds to swith off any of these features BEFORE you drive off, so what's the issue? No need to access these features while driving. If you realise that you want to swith a feature off while driving, just pull over, takes about 30 secobds to do, no big deal at all.

Tuareg said:

It takes 5-10 seconds to swith off any of these features BEFORE you drive off, so what's the issue? No need to access these features while driving. If you realise that you want to swith a feature off while driving, just pull over, takes about 30 secobds to do, no big deal at all.

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Sorry Tuareg. I did not buy a modern car so to disable everything that makes it unreliable. Pulling over on the motorway each time is no serious suggestion.

In this car I need to go in the menus to enable OPD, disable speed signs, cancel ELK and confirm and then enable Alert, disable audio warnings so to only use the vibration in the steering. Then I should go down and disable aeb as well? In 10 seconds? Sure...

You must find lots of very simple things in life very difficult. It seems this type of car is unsuitable for you, maybe something with a lot less modern tech? Diesel Ford Fiesta?

Tuareg said:

You must find lots of very simple things in life very difficult. It seems this type of car is unsuitable for you, maybe something with a lot less modern tech? Diesel Ford Fiesta?

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Other modern cars equipped with the same systems don't try to kill you

Tuareg said:

You must find lots of very simple things in life very difficult. It seems this type of car is unsuitable for you, maybe something with a lot less modern tech? Diesel Ford Fiesta?

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Give me a car that works as advertised. Nothing else.

meveringham said:

I don't understand why everyone is so nonchalant about this! It just happened to me (I'll remove my post, didn't see this one before!) and it's potentially incredibly dangerous. If it had happened at any higher speed than it just did for me, and there was a vehicle following behind, the chances are that they would have driven right into the back of me.

I've disabled the function now (also ludicrous that you need to do so each time, it should remember the setting) but that is wholly unacceptable IMO.

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Totally agree. This so called intelligent system is dangerous. I have lost all confidence to drive my MG 4 EV after it suddenly slammed on the brakes just after I turned into a side road. Luckily the driver behind me had quick reactions and a crash was avoided. This time.

meveringham said:

I don't understand why everyone is so nonchalant about this! It just happened to me (I'll remove my post, didn't see this one before!) and it's potentially incredibly dangerous. If it had happened at any higher speed than it just did for me, and there was a vehicle following behind, the chances are that they would have driven right into the back of me.

I've disabled the function now (also ludicrous that you need to do so each time, it should remember the setting) but that is wholly unacceptable IMO.

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Having not read the posts in this thread, my take on AEB is that

• It’s only as good as the software. For AEB to be perfect, the quality of autonomous driving software has to be perfect, including the ability to predict events. I experience false positive AEB most when a vehicle ahead is turning off my lane and while I know that I won’t hit it (predicting the future based on both it and my vehicles’ current motion), I am still ready to brake if that vehicle does something unexpected. But quite often I drive quite close to vehicles turning off. AEB software isn’t able to understand real world driving situations, so it won’t be perfect.
• Its quality will also vary between manufacturers because it is (should be) incredibly expensive to create and management will assign a limited budget to its development.
• Given the above and there will inevitably be false positives, I still use it because it’s safer than not. AEB has prevented me from rear ending a vehicle which stopped unexpectedly. It was bad driving on my part because I wasn’t paying attention. And the point is that emotional, fallible humans should not be allowed to be in control of tons of metal with lots of momentum when their and other peoples’ lives are at stake. Yes, I do not believe that humans will routinely drive cars in the future and I think that’s a good thing.
• Meanwhile it’s inconvenient if a car brakes unexpectedly with no good reason (my Tesla used to do it on motorways with nothing else nearby) but it’s better than having an accident and rear ending someone is still quite common in cars not using AEB.

So we should put pressure on auto makers to improve AEB (and LKA) when there are specific scenarios that are particularly dangerous, but we can’t realistically expect autonomous driving systems to be flawless because that AI technology doesn’t exist, yet.
From any car manufacturer.

All these 'functions' rely almost entirely on cameras. That's a pretty stupid idea given the amount of dirt that gets thrown up onto a windscreen and the obvious inadequacy of the software used to translate the images.

The Tesla dry wipes the entire screen whenever it decides its vision is impaired before quietly disabling things. It complains that the side cameras can't see anything when it's dark - yeah, we call it night time.

The MG brings up an annoying series of error messages complete with chimes. Half a dozen chimes in quick succession, as it disable various things.

I can't see self driving cars on the horizon for some time yet - imagine the carnage when people are sitting with no control in metal boxes zipping around relying on blinded cameras.

kristinad said:

Totally agree. This so called intelligent system is dangerous. I have lost all confidence to drive my MG 4 EV after it suddenly slammed on the brakes just after I turned into a side road. Luckily the driver behind me had quick reactions and a crash was avoided. This time.

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Not bad for a 1st post