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- An Audi driver claimed that their car's driver assistance system almost killed them.
- The car detected a threat and stopped in the middle of a busy highway, the driver says.
- New safety technologies have reduced crash rates, but errors have exposed companies to lawsuits.
An Audi owner has claimed that their car's collision detection technology put her family's life in danger when it caused the car to suddenly stop in the middle of a highway.
"Audi explain this?" the woman wrote on a TikTok post with the dashcam footage of the incident.
"Our car stopped in the middle of the highway because of your pre sense feature. Apparently, this has happened to many other people and you almost killed me and my whole family."
In the description of the video, the woman wrote that she was in the car with her husband, their dog, and their four-month-old child.
The Pre Sense feature is Audi's collision avoidance technology, which is meant to detect potential dangers around the vehicle.
It prepares the brakes for an emergency stop, or if nothing happens, causes the car to decelerate.
@mnka627 @AudiUSA @audicanada you almost killed me, my husband, my 4 month old and my dog. Your pre-sense failed and after digging deeper it has happened to many others. Explain.#audi #Q5 #audiQ5 #presense #carcrash #accident #highway
♬ original sound - mnka
Some comments suggested that they had been trying to change lanes at a dangerous time and the car had in fact saved them.
In response, the woman said in a second TikTok that she had been trying to respond to another car's reckless driving.
"To everyone saying why did we change lanes: firstly we didn't change a lane, we swerved left because the car behind us was about to hit and they swerved right," she wrote.
Experts say the widespread use of fully self-driving vehicles is "decades away," but Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems (ADAS) have become standard software additions to newer vehicles.
These safety features include blind spot detection, road sign recognition, automatic emergency braking, driver drowsiness detection, and collision intervention.
The crash involvement rate in lane-change crashes for vehicles with blind-sport monitoring was found to be 14% lower than cars without the technology, according to a study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
But errors with the technologies have opened up carmakers to legal challenges.
Tesla is facing several lawsuits over crashes linked to its Autosteer feature, while self-driving car startup Cruise recently recalled its entire fleet of vehicles following an accident involving a pedestrian.
In 2022, another Audi driver claimed the Pre Sense technology on his 2021 Audi Q8 caused his seatbelt to tighten so much that it collapsed his lung, per the Miami New Times.
Audi did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment, which was made outside of normal working hours.