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Model specific boards => Golf mk7 => Topic started by: fairmer on 20 September 2022, 13:39
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Hi guys and gals, I am brand new to this forum, but am desperate to get help.
My daughter bought a 2018 Golf Gti (Mk 7.5) a year ago and absolutely adores it.
Unfortunately, a few weeks after she had it, it seemed to brake heavily all on its own no matter what speed she was driving at.
Anything from crawling, to 70 mph on a motorway, it would brake heavily and nearly stop. She got terrified and I am stressed out non stop thinking its going to cause an accident.
We thought it was the auto hold feature, but not too sure. Any threads i have seen on here have been regards the auto hold not releasing at traffic lights etc, but this is while the car is moving.
I am terrified of her driving the car and as you can imagine, so is she.
We have had it back to the VW dealers, who find nothing every time, as its an intermittent fault, and never happens when its with them.
Does anyone have any suggestions? I am tearing what little hair I have, out with worry.
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Does it occur while driving with adaptive cruise control engaged? Or does it happen randomly even when not using cruise control?
Seen posts of some "active city brake"/"front assist" function which engages the brakes and puts up a warning chevron on the dashboard to "avoid" an accident. It is possible that something is triggering the sensors on the front end of the car to think they are going to hit something.
http://www.vwproblems.com/front-assist-defect/
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That was something i omitted, apologies, DCmk3, the lst time it entered the dealer, that was suggested. So we put the sensitivity to the lowest possible setting, and told daughter to do the same every time she starts the car and it still does it randomly.
It happens when its in cruise control and when just driving about. It actually did it one day as she was coming down the driveway at the house, so she was under 10 mph.
I can handle that, what i cant handle is when she is on a motorway at 70mph and it suddenly grinds to a halt.
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Sometimes this can happen if the sensor is obscured.
Does the car have a standard oblong number plate or does it have one of the types with a small section sticking out from the bottom with the dealers name on it?
My car came from Cazoo, and they fitted one of their plates on the front with the small piece sticking out from the bottom saying Cazoo. I never got the brakes come on automatically, but I did occasionally get random front collision warnings.
I cut the extra piece off with a band saw at work and I haven't had the problem since.
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Symonh2000, wow, that sounds incredible, I will have to check when i get home and see.
I can't comment before checking it, so need to have a look. Appreciate the tip though.
EDIT to add: She just sent me a pic, and the bottom of the number plate hangs down past the bottom of the bumper, if that makes sense.
Will certainly try and get a narrower plate to try that.
(https://i.postimg.cc/wMHRzJLt/70-A923-CE-DFC8-4-B67-98-D1-C8-A6639-C10-F9-1-201-a.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/zbtGSyd5)
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The radar for cruise etc, is behind the VW badge on a 7.5, so nothing to do with the number-plate size or position.
You could try and give the badge a gentle clean just to be sure theres no dirt on there triggering the warning.
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OK excellent thanks madstaff. I am happy to try anything and everything, just to stop the car from braking on its own!!!
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Not sure if you can disable collision emergency braking in the Nav menu somewhere, might be worth disabling it for a while to see if the problem persists??
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It looks as if this is a known issue.
http://www.vwproblems.com/front-assist-defect/
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My Mk7 used to get false collision warnings a fair bit.
They could be triggered by all sorts of things, had a couple of scary lockups at motorway speeds for no reason.
The Mk7.5 was better - not least of which you could adjust the trigger point down to avoid most of them.
My Mk8 still gives erroneous warnings, but not as much as the previous 2.
One thing though common to them all, you get an audible/visual warning, then you get a dab of the brakes and THEN you get emergency braking.
This doesn't progress if the driver makes any kind of avoidance inputs - ie brake, steer or accelerate - all of these things over ride it.
You don't have long though, it is maybe 2 seconds tops. However you probably should be able to react in that sort of time or you shouldn't really be driving....
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The 'collision detect' system is one of my pet hates on my 2020 MK7.5 GTI. I fully support anything to do with safety, but when it catches you unawares it is really disconcerting, not too mention dangerous.
As noted above, the radar on the MK7.5 is set behind the VW badge on the grill (not below the number plate like the Mk7). I have set mine to the least most sensitive setting, but even then it has been known to trigger without warning.
I have learned how to handle it now, it gives a warning if you think you are not in control of the vehicle and then jabs on the brakes pretty hard if no steering, braking or acceleration inputs are detected.
I tend to drive smoothly and not brake hard or late, I have had the warning and brakes go on if I am coasting towards traffic lights for example, and the car believes I am not in control, so now I will just dab the brake very briefly just to 'let the car know'!
I had an alert the other day when I think a car in the opposite direction was probably nearer to the white line than it should have been and it buzzed at me then, but did not brake thankfully.
On another occasion this summer, I was convinced I had backed into a tree! Gently reversing the car suddenly it jolted to an abrupt halt. Got out the car expecting to see damage, mercifully there was nothing! All it was, a small tree to the side, the car had detected presence of an object (like a person) and slammed on the brakes for me. Really shook me up!
I share your frustration with this system, but it should never trigger, as long as the car is receiving those 3 inputs of steering, braking or acceleration.
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The reversing system is another safety one... A different one. It's called manoeuvre braking and you can turn it off. It works on the parking sensors, which obviously can be triggered by long grass etc
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Really appreciate the comments on this.
I am just wondering if replacing the sensor completely would work, if it was a dodgy sensor?
Just as a side note, there is no warning bleep or warning light that appears before the car suddenly brakes, so despite my daughter not having driven for 30 years like i have been, I really don't think that her or my driving ability being called into question is helping anyone.
Anyway, as I said, thanks for the advice.
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The thing with it is that if there is a genuine hazard, the bong and the brake dab will alert you to it and you will react once you too spot the hazard.
If however after the warning there is nothing visible, you won't. You simply won't react with any input in time - its a split second thing that you have to take over and in the time it takes for you to go "there is nothing there", it will cut in.
I had it go mental about a car which pulled over to the side of the road and reversed back to his parking space - two black stripes up the road from that one.
I also had it smash the anchors on on a motorway offslip when i left the motorway rather than join the back of stationary traffic.
The guy behind me thought I'd gone crazy - he was obviously driving sensibly and looking past me to a clear road on the offslip - not expecting me to stand it on its nose...
You should be able to turn front assist totally off if its annoying you - despite all of the above and even now in the Mk8 the odd false positive - I leave it turned on. It has avoided some actual shunts - particularly the classic at a junction rear ending someone who didn't pull out when you expected...
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If the sensor was faulty- even if only intermittently- you would expect a fault code to be showing when vw scanned it.
The system must be detecting something to engage.
I’d get someone else to drive the car for a week or a month and see if the problem is still there. Driving ability will have no bearing on when it engages, though driving style may.
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If it's like adaptive cruise control you can press the accelerator to cancel it out. Regardless, it shouldn't be doing that but knowing this might help for now.
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On my GTI there is a button on the end of the Indicator stalk that turns the Front Driver Assist on and off.
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My car, mk7 GTD, once braked hard for a crisp packet which had been blown into the road and came out under the rear of the car in front. My car’s front assist picked it and puts the brakes in hard. ACC was not in use at the time. The red triangle came up on the dash and plenty of pinging. Luckily nothing much behind me. I assume it was the aluminium in the crisp packet that caused the activation. I have since had empty pop tins roll under the car without incident.
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My car, mk7 GTD, once braked hard for a crisp packet which had been blown into the road and came out under the rear of the car in front. My car’s front assist picked it and puts the brakes in hard. ACC was not in use at the time. The red triangle came up on the dash and plenty of pinging. Luckily nothing much behind me. I assume it was the aluminium in the crisp packet that caused the activation. I have since had empty pop tins roll under the car without incident.
I've had similar with a large crisp packet bag - blew across the road in London and next minute, the car dropped anchors. Annoying but acceptable as I could see what caused it.
What is less so is when I was reversing out my driveway and I was mid point between the gate posts, nothing in sight on reverse camera, mirrors or anything. Emergency braking engaged. I have pea shingle on my drive and the car slid a few inches as the braking was so violent. I wasn't going particularly quickly but there was some swearing, particularly as I have metal gate posts. The only thing I can think is that the field of view of the rear camera triggered it with wind blowing through the hedge.
All nanny aids are turned off for me where permitted by manufacturer controls. I did want to disable the functionality entirely but it will be treated as a modification by an insurer if it's standard functionality and in the event of an accident, the insurance highwaymen will of course act with all the integrity you'd expect. Dealer also won't do it for the liability it imposes upon them.
OP - What was the resolution - did you get it sorted out? Interested to know or is your daughter driving a new car? :shocked:
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Well guys and gals, the car was in at VW for nearly a fortnight this time.
They again found nothing.
My daughter meanwhile, started looking at new Audi S3's etc and had her heart set on one of them.
Being an ex mechanic, I went to the dealer and told him that before all the fancy electronics, when a customer came in with an intermittent fault, we would start replacing things. They then said, "well we could do an ACC recalibration, but that is a last resort".
I was in 2 minds about whether to hit him or kiss him, but we agreed to try it.
So, it has had an ACC calibration last week, and so far, touch wood, it has been fine.
We were told that we could try it for 3 further months, to see if there were any further issues with it.
I have to say the dealer has been superb about it all, and as annoying as it is, they have been great.
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You might have been able to replace things, but VW main dealers when doing VW warranty work can't.
They follow a VW computer system which takes data and asks questions and then tells them what to do.
They aren't allowed to do anything else or VW won't pay for it.
That's why a lot of these problems take a long time to get resolved - even if the dealer knows what the actual problem is...
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If the op's daughter is also using dynamic lane assist and is holding the steering wheel very very very lightly, it will also do this after flagging a warning to take over steering. It will then dab the brakes pretty hard (to jolt the driver awake, as it thinks you have fallen asleep etc
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Well guys and gals, there has been a development since i last posted.
The entire reset was done, and it appeared to be ok, until last week when the auto hold suddenly came on twice in a few minutes.
My daughter was obviously distressed again, as she adores the car.
However, we have since agreed a deal to put the car back to the place we bought it, and have traded it in for a different brand.
She is gutted as I mentioned above, she loved the car.
Anyway, appreciate all the replies and advice, but the bottom line was that I personally felt that the car was unsafe to be driven and due to the fact I work away a lot, i am hoping that the tearful calls are now in the past.
Thanks again for all the help that you gave, much appreciated.