Smart City Brake - How does it feel/sound?

Has anyone had smart city brake engage on them? I was driving into my parking lot for work and there is a bar that goes up when it senses my parking sensor. Well I got up close to it (as I normally do) and I thought I was pressing the brake (but maybe I wasn't since it kind of goes uphill a bit), and all of a sudden my car brakes and it make this loud sound (sort of sounds like when you pull the emergency brake up) and it just basically seemed like my brakes went out on me (but my car stopped). I pressed the gas and I was on my merry way, and I was able to park just fine and the brakes seem fine. So was this smart city brake in action?

Yes. That's it.

I got to experience it just this past week. I was tailgating a delivery van downtown (who doesn't when you're in downtown) so we were going 20mph at most. All of the sudden he slows and pulls over to snag a parking spot. That's when SCBS kicked in. It was a sudden heavy breaking, no tire screeching, more like heavy breaking with ABS. Took me by surprise as I wondered WTH?! Then I looked at the dash and noticed that SCBS was displayed in the info area. I would have been able to stop the car myself, but it was pretty cool to see it work in a real life situation.

Top Gear noted that the new VW GTi has a smart brake and that the insurance cost is 5 levels lower because of it...do we get any discounts? Worth telling my Statefarm agent?

We get insurance discounts in the UK for having it, which is one reason why all the others are copying, although I think Volvo first introduced it?

Yes the brakes go full on triggering the ABS which makes them shudder, I pulled into a parking spot, the smart brake saw an overhanging tree limb and scared the crap out of my wife