Volvo auto brake fails during demo
 

Oops!

New S60 gets off to a good start...

Wow, that's a perfect illustration of build "quality" and the need to rely on concentration and driving skills, rather than gadgets.

I saw this on another forum, I said there, and say again, at least the windscreen wipers worked :-)

The start was very good. Pity about the stop.

I've said this many, many times before, and I will go on saying it!!

There is no need to improve upon things that don't need improving.

All these things like heated steering wheels (my absolute top mindnumbingly, spastic useless addition), auto brakes, indicator lights in mirrors and all the rest of it, are so totally unneccessary.

Best cars made were from 1990 to 1998. Period.

Now they are just messing about with them in the so called name of progress.

Three words - HA HA HA!

Auto brake is just another gizmo to go wrong, for people who can't drive - a lot like ESP, EBD, ABS, traction control and so on and so forth. People who need auto brake shouldn't even be on the road.

Really if you can't spot a stationary lorry whilst doing 30mph why would you expect your car to spot it?! I find it difficult to trust my cruise control and tend to drive down the M1 with my foot hovering over my brake pedal anyway... and a couple of times I thought the radar hadn't spotted the car stopping in front so hit the pedal myself.

But I have to disagree somewhat with toxophilus - I do think my DSTC is useful. And ABS is just a technical solution to a manual braking technique, which most drivers no longer learn. EBD I'm sure has its moments.

However auto-wipers seem a bit lazy - I have them but don't bother with them as I can tell when there's lots of water on the windscreen. But I bet someone said the same about self-cancelling indicators!!! My old Citroen CX didn't have them, just a rocker switch, and I coped with it, so why do I need them now?! LOL

The reason this happened was the battery went flat the night before the test , they charged it in the morning and started the car and there was a crash dummy in it .. the people doing the test failed to see the message in the instrument panel that said the Auto-Brake system was disabled .. predumably some fault codes due to the flat battery needed clearing ..
They have done this test 400 times at the factory , so it was human error , and if a human was driving they would have seen the message .

.... or, just possibly, that's the best story they could come up with after the event?