if the car has the ability to hit the brakes on its own when it sees another car in front of you, why can’t it do it when the car goes down an incline/exceeds a certain speed I don’t want to exceed?
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It could do that, but it would kill your fuel efficiency. Ideally you want to coast or engine brake any time you want to reduce speed, because you will travel further using energy that has already been burned.
Also the Toyota adaptive cruise system will use the brakes to prevent over speed, but it will first attempt to use lower gear first. This is because while you are coasting or engine braking you are moving without burning fuel.
My grandmother’s old Mercedes used to do that.
Ideally you want to just let up off the gas instead of braking and then if needed use the brakes. Some brands just simply don’t add this feature or sometimes will reserve it for the more premium models.
Both of mine (Subaru, MINI) will hit the brakes if you exceed the cruise control setting, most often when you’re going downhill. The (electric) MINI will usually use the regenerative braking, but will use the wheel brakes if necessary.
It does. My 23 Civic does that. It tends to first just let off the gas to use engine brakes. If that cannot get the speed under control, the VSA/ABS pump gets involved and use brakes to slow the car down. When it applies the brakes and you step on the brake pedal, you can feel the pedal is harder than usual.
This is how you should drive normally, especially on downhills. Always leverage engine braking to avoid excessive brake wear and maybe even brake overheating.
If your car doesn’t do that, your car also likely does not have AEB features. AEB is the hardware foundation for autobraking. It’s a hardware cost so it can be omitted in certain models/trims.
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