A car that slows on its own and suddenly on the road: it is the scenario experienced by Joanna, resident of the department of Rhône, last April. While driving on the A40 aboard his recent Peugeot 208 and the cruise pace between 110 and 130 km/h, his battery car without her pressing the brake pedal.
There is no beep or obstacle present on the road, this is called “ghost braking”, which can be explained a priori for a dysfunction of emergency driving and braking. Several cases identified in recent years are promoting the Ministry of Transportation to launch an investigation, learned here (former France Bleu) this Wednesday, August 13.
More than 250 testimonies
Surprised by this brutal braking, the car that was rolling behind Joanna had hit him. The shock is very violent, the two vehicles are good for breakage, but fortunately the two drivers are out of cervical sprains and bruises.
After listening to the two motorists, the gendarmerie requests an investigation, but justice refuses. “Not officially, I know it is because it is too expensive and that there was no death,” Joanna said in the microphone of France Inter at the beginning of August.
Surprised by this accident, he had previously told his experience in the columns of the newspaper Le Progès in early July, creating when passing an email address ([email protected]) so that other motorists appear if they had experienced a similar situation. In a month, he received more than 250 testimonies.
Experts who give nothing
All brands would be affected, with more or less serious accidents that have spread in the last four years. Unfortunately, at least one fatal accident is identified, with a driver, Aurélie, who recounts his experience lived in December 2023 in the A7 in Drôme. The same circumstance, with brutal braking when “accelerated.” Stronged from the rear, the clash is terrible: it was his passenger who lost his life, when Aurélie is in a coma.
“His car, a skoda, was evaluated three times, but no failures were found. According to her, her car had already experienced electronic problems in the weeks prior to the fatal accident, with GPS and music. The concessionaire had examined the vehicle, without finding dysfunction,” summarizes here.
The consequences are very heavy for Aurélie, courts last May and sentenced in early July for involuntary homicide. According to the advice of her lawyers, she did not appeal, but she would like “justice, to make the truth” and avoid new dramas that, therefore, could be linked to the recent vehicle team.
The emergency braking in question?
“The Ministry will question the manufacturers and perform tests,” said the Ministry of Transportation on Wednesday. The idea will be to guarantee the proper functioning of emergency braking systems, mandatory in new vehicles sold in Europe since 2022, but has already been offered in certain vehicles for longer.
Thanks to radars, cameras and several sensors, the vehicle can detect the presence of an obstacle, activate an alert and activate the brakes if the driver does not react. A system that is not infallible and that can, such as adaptive speed regulators, misunderstand elements along the way, until it causes unnecessary and even dangerous braking.
We also talk about “false positives”, when the system will voluntarily ignore a detection of a potential obstacle, leaving the driver making the decision to stop or not, precisely to avoid ghost braking. A fine adjustment that had also been indicated during the fatal accident in 2018 in the United States with an autonomous Uber prototype, this time for not having activated automatic braking.
Therefore, the investigation of the Ministry of Transportation will have to shed light on these numerous dysfunctions identified in France in recent years and on the measures to be taken.
Meanwhile, in the most recent vehicles, it is possible to deactivate the emergency braking functions that reactivate each start. False alerts, without necessarily going to the ghost braking, can also press to contact a mechanic to check the various vehicle sensors.
Source: BFM TV
