Intuitively when a car suddenly slows down it feels like the right response is to press on the accelerator: however in my experience this puts you in an unstable regime where you are “fighting” with the car. That is, autopilot continues to try to stop but temporarily accepts your override, but only as long as you maintain consistent pressure on the accelerator. Unfortunately if you even briefly let up on the accelerator, the car proceeds to violently slam on the brakes again. This can lead to a feedback loop where the car’s rapid acceleration/deceleration pattern makes it difficult to maintain consistent pressure on the pedal, and so the experience is like being in a rodeo. Worse, there’s no obvious way “out” of this cycle except to take your foot off the accelerator and let the car (briefly) win.

Counterintuitively, the “correct” way to deal with phantom braking is to avoid the accelerator entirely and instead dive right for the brake pedal: this instantly disengages cruise control. But this is not an intuitive response, you have to learn it the hard way.