Carmakers report no incidents demonstrably caused by phantom braking
Infrastructure Minister Vincent Karremans says there is no full picture of wrongly triggered automatic emergency braking.
Carmakers have not reported to the RDW, the Dutch vehicle approval authority, any incident in which 'phantom braking' was demonstrably the cause, Infrastructure and Water Management Minister Vincent Karremans told parliament. He was responding to written questions from D66 MP Van Leijen and shared a 2022 TNO report on the subject, commissioned by the RDW.
Phantom braking is when a car brakes suddenly and hard for no clear reason, because its autonomous emergency braking system (AEB) steps in wrongly. The EU has made several driver-assistance systems mandatory for new vehicles. "At the same time, it is undesirable that these systems themselves lead to dangerous situations," the minister wrote.
Current European AEB rules do not require anyone to report such incidents to approval authorities like the RDW. Drivers can report to their dealer, the importer or the ILT, the transport inspectorate. The ILT, market supervisor for vehicles since 2023, has received twenty reports relating to AEB in the past four years. It does not know how many concern phantom braking.
Karremans says there is no complete picture of unjustified AEB interventions. Manufacturers do not have to report them, not every driver presumably knows they can report to the ILT, and it is often technically complex to label an intervention 'unjustified'.
One group of systems is treated differently. For certain advanced driver-assistance systems (Driver Control Assistance Systems, or DCAS), manufacturers must report phantom braking to the authority that granted the approval. Carmakers can add these systems to vehicles as an option.
The ministry has also asked the road-safety institute SWOV, as part of its Integrale Mobiliteit Analyse (integrated mobility analysis), to forecast the road-safety effects of regular AEB and of AEB that detects vulnerable road users. That report is expected at the end of this year.
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RDW (Rijksdienst voor het Wegverkeer)
The RDW is the Dutch vehicle approval authority, the national agency for road traffic and vehicles. It grants type approval for vehicles and vehicle parts before they can be sold or used in the Netherlands, and it maintains the national vehicle register that holds registration (kenteken) details. Its approval decisions and vehicle records are the reference point for whether a vehicle model meets the required technical standards.
ILT (Inspectie Leefomgeving en Transport)
The ILT is the Netherlands' Human Environment and Transport Inspectorate, the national supervisory body for transport and the living environment. For vehicles, it acts as market supervisor, checking that vehicles and vehicle parts sold in the Netherlands comply with the applicable rules. Members of the public can report safety concerns about vehicles to the ILT.