Car will phantom break while using autopilot. I will be driving 80 mph on a main free way (I-80) and all of a sudden it will slam on the breaks and go to 40 mph.
2022 Tesla Model 3 driver assistance complaints
Page 9 of 20: complaints 221 to 250 of 559, newest first, as owners wrote them.
The adaptive cruise control, or traffic-aware cruise control (TACC) as Tesla calls it, phantom brakes with no prior warning a few times per hour. It usually happens on straight stretches of road when there isn't much traffic in front of the vehicle. The event that prompted me to write this complaint was when I was travelling on a highway in Utah. I was driving about 80mph slammed on the brakes and slowed to about 30mph. There were a few vehicles behind me when this happened. Thankfully they were able to brake in time to avoid a rear-end collision. I always drive with my foot on the accelerator with TACC because I experience lots of phantom braking, but this particular event happened too quickly to intervene. I have reported this to Tesla, but they claim it's normal operation of the vehicle.
On Saturday, September 3rd 2022, we were on a highway with Autopilot system engaged at 75mph, and without any reason, the autopilot system reduced the speed to 50mph, even thought the highway speed limit was not reduced/changes, there was no vehicle or event requiring the vehicle to reduce the speed, and the Autopilot settings were to keep the current vehicle speed limit. It was a sudden unintended braking action in Autopilot, which could lead the vehicle behind us to crash and a severe accident on the highway. The sudden unintended braking happened 2x during this road trip, without any warning or symptoms.
Phantom braking aggressively appearing during a family road trip. Violent braking leading to a 20-30 mph drop in speed.
While driving down our rural highway, with little traffic, the cruise control is basically unusable. The cameras see the heat shimmer on the highway (100 degrees plus) as another stationary vehicle and slam on the brakes suddenly and frighteningly. If there is traffic (rarely) in front of this, the sudden deceleration never happens. However, the traffic free environment causes this kind of reaction on a regular basis. On a 60 mile trip that we regularly make it happens enough in the first 10 miles that we don't use the cruise control again on the trip. We try again after each software update but this hasn't improved anything yet.
Often when driving on the highway with the cruise control on, the car will activate heavy braking without provocation. Sometimes it happens once on a 2 hour drive other times it happens 3 or 4 times on an hour drive. One time, I was the only car in sight when I was in a double lane 65mph divided highway. I am not using full self driving or auto steer, however it has occurred while using Auto Steer (beta). I'm not sure what causes this braking, but it's dangerous. One time it brake checked a semi truck before I slammed on the accelerator pedal to disable the braking system. Other times I can feel short choppy accels/decels on the highway again without having a car/object in front. Today a driver was following closely and it went into full braking mode. I'm not convinced it's emergency braking, however when you take your foot off the accelerator pedal it does brake heavily with regenerative braking. In our ownership of the car, the collision warning has chimed at us once but not actually activated braking to my knowledge. So far I've seen complaints about Full Self Driving autopilot Phantom Braking, however we don't have that package. However the same systems are physically installed that may feed into the safety systems.
The contact owns a 2022 Tesla Model 3. The contact stated while driving 70 MPH with the self-driving assist feature activated, the vehicle experienced phantom braking. The contact stated that the failure occurred approximately 6-10 times within 7 hours. The contact stated that the failure reoccurred 4 times within 4 hours while driving with self-driving assist and auto-steer mode the following day. The contact notified a Tesla Service Center who informed him to submit a service request online. The contact submitted a service request online and later received a remote diagnostic test report stating that no hardware issues were found and the vehicle was operating as designed. The vehicle was not repaired. The manufacturer was notified of the failure. The approximate failure mileage was 5,200.
The adaptive cruise control thinks that those heat shimmers/pavement mirages you get on asphalt are trucks stopped in the middle of the road and slams on the brakes. It happened dozens and dozens of times on my drive on I-80 from Reno to Colorado. It seems like this is a common experience from searching the internet. I will take it in for service but it seems like its happening to everyone so not likely to get fixed. Sometimes it will only slow down a little bit, 5 or 10 mph, but I've also had it hit the brakes hard and slow me down to 25 below the speed limit. Sooner or later this is going to cause accidents, if it hasn't already.
While driving using the autopilot system on a clear, sunny day with no traffic ahead or behind my vehicle, I had a Phantom braking incident causing my brakes to be applied in an unsafe manner which would have brought me to a complete stop had I not intervened by quickly stepping on the accelerator. I was moving along at freeway speed when this incident occurred.
Several incidences of phantom breaking occurred when no other cars were around. This took place during our road trip from Michigan to Montana. One of the days, it occurred over 10 times, with the worst resulting in a hard brake from 75mph to 50mpg before I could intervene. The majority of the time there were no cars within 200 yards ahead or behind me. If there were a car behind me, it could have resulted in a severed accident. The braking was hard enough to throw me and my children hard into seatbelts, even causing the belts to lock. I reported these incidents to Tesla but have heard nothing back.
My Tesla model 3 has detected imaginary object while using auto pilot feature and applied FULL brake pressure to stop the car, which puts us in danger of being rear ended.
The car will dramatically, without warning, and unexpectantly brake while using the adaptive cruise control. This has occurred with absolutely no issue that should provoke the braking. One instance did occur with traffic behind me, which led to those vehicles having to emergency brake. I do note that this issue has been frequently reported and characterized as "phantom braking". It is real and it is a genuine risk and concern. I will report yesterday's incident, but it has occurred several times previously.
Full Self Driving on this car experienced Phantom Breaking meaning it braked by itself when there were no nearby cars ahead of me. This is very dangerous as it can cause cars behind me to crash into me.
I wish to report numerous cases of the phantom braking or spurious deceleration that I have experienced. In driving over 2500 miles on highways I have experienced this issue at least 40 times. It would be more, but I have stopped using it. Almost all cases were on mostly open roads through Kansas, Colorado and Wyoming. The odds of it happening appear to be higher when the road is hilly and another vehicle, typically a semi, is far ahead. Timing the distance, it looks like the semi is 12-15 seconds ahead of me in a 70mph zone. This creates a situation where I may be cresting a slight hill upwards while the semi is cresting the next hill ahead of me. That situation (just one example, others are more flat roads with no vehicles ahead) creates a distance challenge where the point between the vehicles is shorter than the actual distance, due to the hills. One instance slowed so quickly the tires squealed briefly. This feature, Traffic Aware Cruise Control TACC or autopilot, should never be used if another vehicle is following closer than 5-8 seconds behind. I have tried things to help the situation, such as making sure the cameras are clean and recalibrating the cameras with clearly defined lines and no changes have resulted.
Experienced multiple episodes of severe phantom breaking when traveling over 60mph with adaptive cruise control on.
Driving with cruise control on two lane or interstate car will automatically just slam on breaks. Dropping cars speed 10+ mph. There is no warning it breaks hard enough to skid tires and lock seatbelt. I have several times it has break checked car that are behind me cause them to switch lanes abruptly. It will do it some times after you merge back into a lane after you pass some one. There is no warning at anytime it will do this. I reported this to them the day I purchased this car new. They canceled the service appointment and said car will update it self and there is a software issue they are working on. Car is getting worse as time goes on. It does it every time you drive it. I understand if it slowed down 1 to 3 mph but it will drop 20 mph in seconds. It violently brakes. You can hit accelerator pedal fast enough before it drops 10 mph.
The contact owns a 2022 Tesla Model 3. The contact stated that while driving approximately 75 MPH with the cruise control activated, the vehicle abruptly reduced speed to approximately 35 MPH without warning. The contact indicated that no other vehicles or objects were nearby to cause the Forward Collision Avoidance system to be activated. The cause of the failure was not determined. The local dealer and manufacturer were not notified of the failure. The failure mileage was 7,000.
Multiple instances of hard phantom highway braking on clear sunny days with no other vehicles close while using adaptive cruise control. If another vehicle had been following closely it could have caused a rear end collision as there was no cause to slow down. This problem is recurring. Tesla says to just report the incident on their automated system but there has been no response from them.
While using the Autosteer/ Adaptive cruise feature on a recent long trip multiple times while at speeds of 55 - 75 MPH the car aggressively applied the brakes almost causing an accident where an 18 wheeler was following closely passing another truck. The other times it occurred were on flat roads with no vehicle in front or on either side.
While traveling on a highway (~ 50 mph) I engaged the cruise cruise control. After about 5 minutes -- while no traffic or obstacle anywhere near me -- the car suddenly applied emergency braking bringing the car near full-stop in the middle of the highway. I am fortunate there was no one behind me or it would have resulted in a collision. Obviously it was a terrifying event and I have instructed my family never to use that feature.
Cruise control engaged at highway speeed of 70 mph. Car applied emergency braking hard and slowed to 52 MPH. Road is 4 lane divided highway. There were no vehicles within a mile in front of car. There were no other obstacles on the road. Car did the same thing 4 other times under similar conditions. The way the car brakes on an unobstructed road can easily cause me to be rear ended. Speed control is not useable in this condition if any other vehicle is traveling behind. This is not an isolated Incident in my Tesla. It has happened multiple times on different roads in all environmental conditions. Todays event happened around 1500, bright sunshine, straight and flat road.
Over a 4500 mile road trip, I experienced about 75 emergency braking incidents that were not caused by anything visible in the road or due to conditions. In nearly all cases there were warning chimes, but not always. Most were at highway speeds and were a sudden attempt to brake which required me to immediately react by stepping on accelerator to maintain distance in front of cars or large trucks behind me. It seemed more likely to happen at higher speeds (70-85 mph) and often times in more hilly areas of highways and often times as well coming just over the crests of hills. Tesla reviewed logs and said they didn't see anything and have been unhelpful. This is a high risk issue if cars stop on highways and people are not able to react quickly enough. So
We were using traffic aware cruise control on autopilot in Florida on our way back home from vacation, when st approximately 7:45am our model 3 suddenly slammed on the brakes on a very busy highway. We were almost rear ended, thankfully our quick response to take over and the driver behind us paying attention let us avoid a crash. Over the next 15 minutes the Tesla had one more phantom braking incident, thankfully we were ready as we no longer trusted it, then it began to reduce speeds to 30- 45mph saying that was the speed limit. The speed limit was 55 and 60mph. We have not experienced this problem until now but are very concerned about the safety of using autopilot or cruise control.
During a recent trip from San Diego to Tucson and back, I had several incidents, in each direction, of sudden deceleration/phantom braking when the Autopilot feature was engaged, while driving on the I-8 and I-10 highways. The first time it happened, the collision avoidance alert also went off with very abrupt braking. Each time, the car did not brake to a stop, bud did suddenly and quickly decelerate several mph. After a couple of incidents, I prepared to intervene by pressing the accelerator to counter the slowdown. I thought it might be the autopilot causing the issue, so I started using the adaptive cruise control only without the steering feature, but it happened once with only adaptive cruise control too. Altogether, there were about 4 incidents per direction of travel.
Multiple times, during a bright sunny day, I've been traveling on the highway, with no traffic around for a mile ahead, with cruise control on. There were times with no autopilot on, and times when it was on. The car slammed on the brakes, going from 80mph to 30 mph, and once the car realized there was no object on the road, it returned back to 80 mph, and kept going. This would be very dangerous if there was a car following behind me. This is "phantom braking". It has happened 10-12 times during a 200 mile trip, on divided, as well as undivided highways, with no traffic, and with oncoming vehicles in the opposite lane.
Phantom braking. The car had autopilot enabled and applied brakes to slow down even though there was nothing in front that would have caused a collision. Fortunately there was no vehicle behind otherwise it may have caused a collision.
Phantom braking!! This car is almost undriveable due to it “hitting the brakes so hard” so often… TESLA PLEASE!! Fix this!! I want “dumb” cruise so it doesn’t ever hit the brakes… I am going to get rear ended someday!! The car hits the brakes so hard that it actually leaves black marks on pavement sometimes when there is literally NOTHING on the road and it’s completely clear!!
I was hit by a woman driving a Tesla with autopilot turned on. The system did not detect the red light, and she hit the right front quarter panel of my vehicle, totally my vehicle. The autopilot system malfunctioned and should have detected both the red light and the collision which was likely to occur. To my knowledge, the vehicle is in the control of either the driver's insurance company or the Police.
When driving on a 4 lane divided highway using adaptive cruise control at 70mph+, the emergency braking will suddenly activate, even when the road ahead is completely clear with no surrounding traffic. The car will suddenly brake, sometimes dropping 30mph or more off of speed, from 75 close to 40. Stepping on the gas pedal will abort this braking. If left alone, the car will stop braking and accelerate back to the original speed with no driver input. This will happen multiple times over 40 miles of highway driving. If it happened when being closely followed, the chance of being rear ended by the trailing car is high, though thankfully this has not occurred yet. The problem happens daily on commuting and has happened since taking ownership of the car on Jun 29, 2022 through today.
Numerous times while on cruise control “autopilot” the car suddenly and rapidly decelerates for no apparent reason. Most often when no other cars or obstacles are seen and during full daylight (no rain or other complicating weather) but has also occurred at night. Typically while driving at highway speeds 65-80mph and the deceleration is rapid and significant (decreases by estimated 20 mph within 1 sec).
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