So here is my latest on this... I actually had to go without my GCL for 2 weeks because... for reasons unknown... my front drive shaft separated from the axle. Over that two weeks, I was given a 2021 Jeep Renegade as a loaner to drive. The Renegade has a very similar, if not same, radar sensor behind the front bumper with a similar squared-off section at the center of the bumper. While driving the Renegade, the Advanced Braking System engaged for me TWICE due to one vehicle making a sudden turn in front of me in an intersection, and another time it got a little angry about an oncoming car that got into the center lane on the highway and it was hugging the line enough that the system felt concerned it was coming into my lane - but it engaged. And then something I noticed while driving the Renegade... We had a snowfall hit and while I was in a store, the snow piled up on the front bumper and blocked the sensor. The car recognized that the sensor was blocked by the snow and it gave me a warning on the dash indicating that the sensor was blocked and was being disabled until the blockage was cleared. I cleared the snow and the sensor reengaged. So I get my GCL back from the drive shaft replacement and I tell my service advisor about the actions of the sensor in the Renegade and I said I was going to try a test by creating a blockage of the sensor to see if it would give me the disengagement message on the dash. I first tried taping a thick cardboard box flap on the bumper in front of the sensor. I did not get the blocked sensor error message. I tried it again when I got home by taping a balled-up shop rag - much thicker than the cardboard - to the bumper in front of the sensor and still no error message or disengagement of the system. I called my service advisor back and told him about this test not working. He claims he was calling it into STAR. I don't know that I am confident anything is actually happening.
Could anyone else try this test - blocking your sensor in some way, whether your Advanced Braking System works or not - to see if you get an error message disengaging the system after you start the car and drive it a few hundred feet? I am curious to see if this works for ANYONE. I am convinced either the radar sensor is non-functional OR there is a software issue in our systems that gives false readings that the system is operational when they run a diagnostic and it isn't actually working as it should. This is a pretty important safety feature to me and I think it is utterly ridiculous that this isn't working as it should and gets shrugged off otherwise.