NEWBIE Desperate for help

[fairmer]

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.

[DCmk3]

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/

[fairmer]

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.

[symonh2000]

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.

[fairmer]

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.

[madstaff]

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.

[fairmer]

OK excellent thanks madstaff. I am happy to try anything and everything, just to stop the car from braking on its own!!!

[madstaff]

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??

[symonh2000]

It looks as if this is a known issue.


http://www.vwproblems.com/front-assist-defect/

[fredgroves]

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....