AEB autonomous emergency braking

I've had it brake for me once at a 4-way stop for no apparent reason. It was really annoying, so after that I turned the sensitivity down as low as it would go.

 

@chrunck how did you adjust the sensitivity? I've had mine randomly brake usually when the sun is low in the sky and there is glare.

I definitely have had mine freak out and tell me to hit the brakes when a car is slowly turning and I'm using the regenerative braking to slow down but my foot is off the brake pedal. Not often but it does happen.

 

It is not as comprehensive as other vehicles and there are a few formal tests you can look up. It really only claims to reduce the severity of frontal impact under good conditions for vehicles and pedestrians. Outright prevention is limited to situations you could handle yourself. Pedestrian detection is effectively non-existent in my experience. Vehicle side of things has a fair bit of false positives, though it's never taken action (unless I was in ACC.) Direct sun, rain, hills, turns, lane changes, people changing lanes in front of you - all fool the camera system really easily.

More modern systems actively prevent collision in multiple directions, even taking autonomous evasive maneuvers is relatively common and affordable these days. At the high end vehicles can do this in complete darkness, in bad weather, and detect things like large animals. We aren't talking about any of this on the latest generation of MINI, but maybe next?

 

I'm not 100% sure, but I think I pressed the safety system button above the center screen (the green one next to the hazard button) and adjusted it there.

 

I detailed my experience with it here: https://www.insideevsforum.com/community/index.php?threads/mini-warnings.15314/#post-191531

I know of one particular road nearby that is also a left bend with cars parked on the side of the road that will sometimes cause the red card indicator on the gauge cluster to light up as if I'm too close.

 

In two years and 20,000 miles, I've only had one instance where the car actually applied the brakes (someone decided to turn left at the head of a long line of traffic going 55), and the car just barely braked before I did. This not to be confused with the warning beep (which is adjustable).

 

I'm not sure if this is common industry wide, but MINI touts their more "analog" crash and pre-crash response. Specifically related to your anecdote is priming the brakes for faster response time when it thinks stuff is about to go down. Paired with high regen it stops better than other cars I've owned.

 

I've seen mine occasionally flash the red car and prime the brakes if I'm coming around a bend with parked cars, for instance. But I have pedestrian warning on and I've never seen it react in any way to a pedestrian or perceived pedestrian. I've also never noticed it truly apply the brakes.

 

I'm convinced it's not good enough to even be advertised. I rarely encounter these situations, but today had one that should have triggered it. City speed, city traffic, pedestrian being revealed quickly - a classic test for this sort of system.

This IIHS test of BMW X1 shows the old system (probably close to what we have) obliterating a pedestrian. The new version does a great job and is what people probably expect when you advertise "Pedestrian Collision Warning with City Collision Mitigation" in 2020+ vehicles.

 

i had it activate once. i was going down a hill to a stoplight, all while i was letting the regen do the breaking, and the mini did a sudden break within 5 feet of the car.

i was surprized since i wasnt going that fast