My initial reading of this comment caused me a bit of confusion. We really do feel acceleration in a literal sense, but I think the point is that as human being

My initial reading of this comment caused me a bit of confusion. We really do feel acceleration in a literal sense, but I think the point is that as human beings, we're accustomed to the constant force of gravity, so any constant acceleration due to other forces feels like gravity. Just a nitpick: gravity doesn't change in any way when a car stops decelerating. The net force does change (causing the jerk, i.e., second derivative of velocity), but we feel it most because we become accustomed to the gravity-like forces (and their non-vertical direction) acting prior to stopping.