This happens with regular adaptive cruise control on my Ford, when the cruise control set point is a lot higher than the current speed: the car accelerates after another car clears the lane and ram into things.
Ford didn't call their adaptive cruise control "auto pilot", they call it as it really is: "Adaptive Cruise Control with Stop-and-Go".[1] By contrast, Tesla touted their ACC "auto pilot" with auto steering and clearly in this case it didn't steer correctly and proven fatal (at least 3 times in my memory.)
To contrast that anecdote, this doesn't happen with my Subaru with EyeSight. It uses parallax for 3D distance, if it detects a solid object ahead (be it vehicle, wall, barrier, or anything else) it will apply the emergency braking system (which may still result in a collision in the given circumstances but at much less fatal speeds).
The industry has many highly effective AEB systems, and has for years now. I cannot comment on Ford's because I don't know specifically about its problems.
My Subaru with EyeSight accelerates heavily when it no longer is tracking a car in front. This has happened once or twice in odd circumstances, but since I was paying attention to both the speed increase and road in front I tapped the brakes to disengage.
My Camry Hybrid sometimes picks up cars in the lane next to me and a car length ahead, to match speed with them. And sometimes it loses the car ahead of it on turns. I try to aim the top of the steering wheel at the car ahead of me, and this seems to help the sensor a great deal.
On turns, it doesn't accelerate, only maintains speed; can be frustrating if you want to act like a racecar driver. For example, following someone around a freeway curve at 45mph, and the other driver changes out of your lane. Despite having adaptive cruise set to 60mph (or higher), it will stay at 45mph until after the curve, and only accelerate after ~5 seconds of straight roadway.
It does sound the collision alert (sadly no autonomous braking here) very consistently when I'm accelerating or adaptive cruise is on, and there's a stationary object ahead.
> Despite having adaptive cruise set to 60mph (or higher), it will stay at 45mph until after the curve, and only accelerate after ~5 seconds of straight roadway.
Like all adaptive cruise controls, it will accelerate if you have the max speed set higher, but it will not ram into things since it's on you to steer.
