I have a 2021 Honda and have had no problem with the auto braking, so I'm going to assume that either the cars affected have a specific defect from the factory

I have a 2021 Honda and have had no problem with the auto braking, so I'm going to assume that either the cars affected have a specific defect from the factory or something specific has broken. To all appearances, the way it is set up on my car is designed to prevent phantom braking and does so. The big orange warning flashes occasionally when there is a large speed difference compared to the car ahead. This can happen on an off ramp, or when a car ahead is turning right. In these cases, it's never braked on its own, and it seems likely that it would only brake to mitigate a collision rather than avoiding one. This, to me, is a reasonable tradeoff that surely is by design. When using the adaptive cruise control, it once or twice (in well over a year) has reacted to a car in the wrong lane, for instance, on a three lane highway it detected the vehicle in the left lane momentarily and slowed slightly. But it didn't panic brake, and it's very rare that it has an issue with lanes, even on sweeping curves. The only time it has actually panic braked was when someone ahead of me slowed to turn right, and I was startled and hit the brake and it assisted so as to brake much harder. It seems like it was activated only when I hit the brakes and only because of the velocity/abruptness of the pedal movement, which is exactly what it's intended to do (may be classified separately as brake assist). I didn't need to brake that hard, but I wasn't rear ended so... The final glitch I've had is that when driving in heavy snow/sleet/rain the radar stops working when gunk covers the sensor. This has only happened once and when it happened, it only shut off the adaptive cruise control without doing anything else undesirable. It's not clear to me if there is some reason there isn't a smooth cover to prevent accumulation. Sometimes incredibly weird electrical glitches can arise from somewhere that the average service place will not find or even really look for. I had a different car (not a Honda) that was about 6 years old, no visible rust, and seemed afflicted by electrical gremlins. It turned out that due to poor design of the taillights, water had collected in them, and the exposed wiring had corroded to where it looked like it had been at the bottom of the ocean. I only found out because one taillight finally stopped working at all. But it was a lesson on how simple damage to wiring can be hard to diagnose, because inconsistent voltage or whatever scrambles the computers. In theory, that car had a built in diagnostic function to warn a taillight was out. But it never registered at all. I expect a Japanese car to not have problems like this until 200,000 miles in the rust belt. But everybody tends to rest on their laurels.