In 2022, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) logged 758 complaints about Teslas suddenly decelerating for no reason on American highways (NHTSA ODI, 2022).
Drivers describe their vehicles “slamming the brakes” out of nowhere, with one shaken owner telling reporters, “It just slammed the brakes”.
These aren’t isolated glitches. U.S. District Judge Georgia Alexakis recently gave the green light to a class-action lawsuit, citing allegations that Tesla knowingly withheld warnings about this dangerous defect.
Part of the problem with teslas is they will sometimes do the phantom braking even when not on autopilot. My gf has a model 3 we bought back before F-Elon went full mask off, and there’s a certain road we occasionally drive where the car will just slam on the brakes for no reason wherever another road joins the main one. We both refuse to use autopilot but it still does it with even normal cruise control active and sometimes even under full manual control. Its a serious problem. We’d replace the stupid thing if we could afford it but its devalued so much that its more affordable to just keep it.
Yeah, Tesla’s don’t have ordinary cruise control. They have adaptive cruise control and autopilot, which is adaptive cruise control + lane keeping. Both just use the camera. If you’re hoping to rest your foot during a cross country drive, then you better prepare for it to lurch every time it sees a shadow. Once every couple of miles if the road has enough shadows.
Yup, its a terrible design. Every other automaker uses some form of lidar with the cameras, but elon says “HuMaNs DrIvE wItH jUsT eYeS”. So we get this bullshit.
Edit: spelling
That’s so scary. Sorry you have to deal with that. Stay safe.