Front Sensors?

Pitter

Pitter
Contributor
:
2020 CX-5 Signature Azul Metalico
The other day I was driving home on a winding road and in the middle of a curve a motorcycle was coming in my direction. Because of the curve it was for a moment directly in front of me and a front sensor sounded. Ten minutes later the same situation occured but this time it was a bicycle in that position and again a front sensor sounded. I've had the car for two years and don't recall ever having that experience before. What's the explanation for this?
 
I've encountered the same thing when moving into a left turn lane and slowing to a stop. Vehicles making right turns from my left toward me sometimes cause an alarm to sound. I can go months without it happening or a couple of times over a couple of days like this week. I take the irregular occurrence to be just situational happenstance--my vehicle angling left toward the turning vehicle with just the right timing with the position of the other vehicle.

The first couple of times this happened I thought it was a false positive blind spot alert since I had my left turn signal on and the alarm seemed to go off as the turning vehicle was about side-by-side. Since I'm watching the road as I come to a stop I can't say if the side mirror flashed in any of these instances. Since those early occurrences, I'm more inclined to think it's a false positive collision avoidance alert though I'm not certain.

If you were curving left toward the oncoming cycles, not right and away, I'd guess you were getting a collision avoidance alert. A lane departure audible alert, if you have that function turned on and got near a road line, shouldn't activate on a curve. I've found that to be the case without exception so far.

While simply driving, I've had a collision avoidance alert only twice, both on the same day. I was going 55-60 mph on a two lane back road with vehicles in front slowing to turn right. I could hav been just driving a little frisky that day, not being sufficiently defensive by braking to the vehicle's liking. However, there were 800 lbs. of people in the car, the only time I've been hauling that kind of weight. I doubt that's a factor, but who knows--maybe the vehicle somehow senses the weight and assesses a longer braking distance.

Anyway, these safety system false positives don't bother me much. It's the false negatives--not operating when they should--is more problematic if one is prone to trust them.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
The other day I was driving home on a winding road and in the middle of a curve a motorcycle was coming in my direction. Because of the curve it was for a moment directly in front of me and a front sensor sounded. Ten minutes later the same situation occured but this time it was a bicycle in that position and again a front sensor sounded. I've had the car for two years and don't recall ever having that experience before. What's the explanation for this?

I had a similar incident with my CX-5 the other day. I had radar cruise control set on a 2-lane highway with bicycle lanes. While on a left curve, a bicycle in the bike lane was just ahead and the system must have interpreted it as being directly in front. It braked automatically, beeped, and flashed "BRAKE!" on the gauge cluster's display. Not sure if it was the radar cruise or the smart brake system that would have triggered this, although I have owned my car for only a few weeks.
 
The system may have kicked in based on your steering (maybe you were steering a little more towards center than you were previously?). It may have also considered lane markings, where if there are no markings detected, the car may assume that the oncoming car is in the same lane as yours and become more sensitive/trigger more easily. But this is all just guesswork on my part
 
Back