I was on a road trip and no less than 20 times over 10 hours, my car when standard cruise control was set, the car applied the brakes HARD for me without any warning. It went from scary to nearly resulting in a rear-end collision. The cause ranged from absolutely no reason except for maybe a slight dip in the highway(? weird) to oncoming traffic - standard, nothing close to an emergency situation. I had ALL auto features disabled and was just using the set speed feature. I've submitted a service request but the next appointment is in two weeks and in the meantime, I'm frankly scared to drive the car. It happened at 70 miles per hour and immediately dropped me down to 40 on the highway and I just about had to take a break from driving I was so shaken. It also happens on local backroads when I have the feature set to just 35 miles per hour.
2021 Tesla Model Y driver assistance complaints
Page 14 of 22: complaints 371 to 400 of 630, newest first, as owners wrote them.
Phantom braking on a two lane highway. The vehicle would suddenly go into emergency braking when a truck was coming in the opposite direction. We were making a 200 mile round trip and it happened approximately 6 times. Called Tesla who advised to disable automatic braking on two lane highway until bug was fixed,
Vehicle engaged full automatic braking inappropriately while driving around 55 miles per hour on a two-lane Oregon highway. No traffic in front of me or any debris in road.
The contact owns a 2021 Tesla Model Y. The contact stated that while driving at various speeds with the cruise control activated, the braking system erroneously activated, causing the vehicle to abruptly slow down and reduce speed. The contact indicated that the failure had occurred on multiple occasions. The cause of the failure was not yet determined. The local dealer and manufacturer were not yet notified of the failure. The failure mileage was 500.
At 12:21pm on February 20, 2022, while driving on a divided highway (US-36), the Tesla Model Y braked hard with no cars nearby. The braking occurred as the car encountered a shadow on the roadway from an overpass. The sun was very bright, so the shadow had very high contrast. We suspect this is a case of "phantom braking", as has been reported with many Tesla Model Y and 3. The problem is not easily re-producible, but we also do not feel safe using the cruise control feature any longer, so it's unlikely to be reproduced soon. The vehicle has not been inspected by Tesla, nor confirmed by the dealer. There were no warning lamps or chimes - just a sudden, hard braking for approximately 1 second, losing approximately 20mph, immediately.
44E east of Joplin car braked hard while on autopilot. Pressing the accelerator would override but as soon as you let up it would hard brake again even though the car was below the cruise control speed
When using cruise control, the vehicle unexpectedly brakes on multiple occasions. This occurs when there are no other vehicles in the vicinity. It has also occurred when passing tractor trailers. I understand there have been hundreds of similar reports. No warning provided prior to the failure. This is a safety hazard that must be addressed. Tesla service will be notified.
Sometimes randomly but often in the spot, when in autopilot, the car will randomly brake hard when there is no car or obsticle in front of me. This has occured when I'm on the highway and I've noticed a pattern that it happens when I go under and overpass. Its usually very sunny and there is a strong shadow in front of the car. I think with the camera vision autopilot it thinks the shadow is an obstacle in the road but I'm not sure. This happens very suddenly and luckily has not happened when a car is following close behind me. But if it did this could definitely cause a rear collision at high speeds.
I was driving south on Highway 101 on 2/8/22. I was using the self driving feature. The car abruptly slowed down and was appearing to stop even though there was no collision imminent. Traffic was moderate.
Frequent phantom braking events occur without warning in cruise control and range from light braking to very hard braking. This especially occurs on two lane roads and occasionally on four lane roads and rarely on freeways, but it does occur. For example, we recorded approximately 14 phantom braking events within 20 minutes on US 191 North in Utah (2/12/22), and 28 phantom braking events on US 6 in Utah (2:46 pm to 4:37 pm on 2/17/22). The "hard" braking occurs without warning and rapidly reduces speed by about 20 mph, which is extremely dangerous especially with traffic from behind when traveling the posted speed limit of 65 mph. The majority of observed phantom braking events will reduce speed from 5 to 20 mph. Phantom braking has occurred the entire time we have owned the vehicle (8/21)
The adaptive cruise control feature frequently hits the brakes despite no obstacles in the road. Major triggers seem to be: Oncoming cars on an undivided highway at night. Oncoming 18-wheelers on an undivided highway at any time in day. Going over the top of a hill. Small bumps in the road at night. A large vehicle with blinking red hazard lights in view. (This will slam on the brakes and set the speed limit to 50 as it seems to think it's an emergency vehicle) Blinking red traffic lights. Sometimes HOV lane entrances will use a blinking red light to show that the lane is closed, and the car will slam on the brakes thinking it's an emergency vehicle. There's a risk of rear-end collisions caused by the sudden decelerations. Most of these events happened on highways with low traffic. No warning lights or messages were displayed before the events.
Multiple occurrences of unanticipated hard breaking. Adaptive Cruise Control will slam on the breaks when car is adjacent a pedestrian or bicyclist. The car car doesn't slow down as it approaches a pedestrian walking on the side of the road but slams the breaks on when the car is next to the pedestrian or cyclist. This unanticipated event causes the car to immediately drop in speed between 5 to 30 mph. Any motorists following will not be prepared for this illogical behavior and significantly increases the probability of a rear end collision. This behavior of the Adaptive Cruise Control has also occurred when the car approaches oncoming highway traffic regardless of whether the highway is divided or not. In this event, if the driver of the Tesla model Y does not instantly take over complete control of the vehicle a severe rear end collision can occur. I have not addressed this with Tesla nor have I taken my car in for inspection. I have been told by an owner of a Model 3 and an owner of a Model S that they have also experienced similar situations caused by the poorly calibrated performance of the Tesla Adaptive Cruise Control system. I have been forced to stop using the Adaptive Cruise Control and Auto-steer on my Model Y as this problem is on going.
While driving in auto pilot on highways, not freeways, the car will suddenly brake when it sees a car on the side road that is not coming into traffic. The braking is very sudden and harsh. Throwing driver and passengers forward. I will not use this feature because I feel it is unsafe to use. Please make tesla make changes.
Phantom braking when adaptive cruise control engaged. More extreme braking occurs when oncoming traffic approaches from uphill or oncoming vehicle is large (e.g. box truck or semi tractor). Also occurs when large objects appear well off the right side of the road.
While adaptive cruise control is enabled, the car will hard brake at random. The screen doesn't indicate why the car is randomly braking, not are there any other indicators as why or when this will happen. This occurs most often while going around corners, up hills, or when traffic is oncoming in the other lane. This happens on standard roads and highways - although highways are a little better as long as the opposite bound lane is separated by a wide median. Contacted Tesla support December 16, 2021 in which their reply was that "the car is learning... apply constant pressure to pedal in order to override braking system". I did try that for a couple of months, and instead of hard braking, it is a little gentler, but then I run the risk of going over the speed limit as constant pressure has to be applied ontop of whatever the cruise control is set to. Not too mention this defeats the purpose of having cruise control.
My Tesla Model Y has terrible Phantom Braking problems. The AutoPilot features on the Tesla is extremely dangerous. Phantom Braking can happened anytime whenever AutoPilot feature is used, it just suddenly slow the vehicle without warning, there’s no other vehicle in front of me. The problem occurred more on a less busy freeway/ highway, sometimes it’s totally useless because the the feature is too dangerous. On a two lane highway, when more car detect a larger vehicle on the opposite lane, it started slowing down, sometimes that’s very dangerous because cars behind me almost hit my car. Tesla’s AutoPilot is extremely dangerous, they should recall the car and fix the problem.
While using the adaptive cruise control on the highway, the car abruptly slowed down from approximately 70 mph to less than 55 within a few seconds before I was able to push the gas petal and reaccelerate. This has happened 3 other times in the last several weeks and I am now afraid to use the cruise control. Whereas no accident occurred, if it happened when another car was following me closely, it could have easily resulted in a crash. Each time this has happened, there were no other cars nearby so I don’t know what the car ‘saw’ and was reacting to. The date entered below for the incident is the most recent occurrence.
Phantom braking. I have had numerous incidents of phantom braking, and can reproduce the problem at will on a particular stretch of road. It happens regularly on city streets, occasionally on Interstate highways. It is sufficiently unreliable as to be worthless. I reported the problem to Tesla online in a service request, and was told that the problem will be or has been solved with software.
While I’m adaptive cruise control or Autopilot the vehicle has phantom braking which occurs. Vehicle will slam on the brakes for no apparent reason.
The car ‘phantom’ brakes all the time. It is so bad that I cannot use the cruise control. I’ve had several instances where vehicles following me almost hit the back of my car because my car braked so hard.
This issue has happened numerous times since I’ve taken possession of the car. The vehicle perceives a potential collision when no such potential collision exists. The car will suddenly brake while traveling down the interstate at high speeds (maximum speed limit). Fortunately, no one has been so close behind me that this has resulted in an accident, but it is only a matter of time. I took it in to a Tesla dealership this week to have it looked at. Despite the adjustments made at the dealership, it happened again on my drive home from the dealership. I feel this automatic breaking system is unsafe. It also breaks suddenly at sharp turns or curves in the road, even at low speeds. It doesn’t anticipate the turn and thinks the driver is heading straight into an obstruction. Part of the issue is learning to think like a computer and learning to anticipate what the computer thinks is happening as opposed to what the human driver thinks is happening. It requires constant vigilance.
Multiple Emergency braking events basically everytime a semi passed during auto pilot and some phantom braking when only using traffic aware cruise control... Lucky to not get rear ended
When driving with the cruise control on, the car suddenly and rapidly brakes for no apparent reason. Nothing in front of the car. Problem has happened multiple times. Very hard Braking that if someone was behind us it would likely have caused an accident. We no longer use the cruise control because we are afraid of it causing an accident.
Phantom braking. Vehicle slams the brakes on as soon as it sees an approaching vehicle in the opposite lane. Cruise control is unusable on two lane roads.
On a cross-country trip from Washington, DC to Oklahoma City on Feb 5th and 6th (Saturday and Sunday) I tried to use the "adaptive cruise control" for the first time. Terrifying. The car would be driving along at 80mph, and then it would suddenly slam on the brakes, seemingly without provocation... with a 30-35mph sudden deceleration (absolutely nobody/nothing in either of the lanes in front of me). This was not while using the "full self-driving" feature, as I did not pay the extra $10k for this functionality, only the adaptive cruise control. Another very disturbing thing was that when the adaptive cruise control was enabled, it would not allow me to turn off the windshield wipers... and every so often the wipers would just start frantically wiping despite only a small bit of rain hitting the windshield (again, disturbing, as it is very startling when it happens out of nowhere). Needless to say, after this happened 5 or 6 different times over these two days, I turned off adaptive cruise control and kept it off. Tried to contact Tesla service, but they kept dodging the issue so I stopped trying.
Car braked for now reason when the entire roads in front was clear and there was a car behind me. It was a hard brake which scared me and my family. That was very very close to being in an accident. Need compensation from Tesla for going through such an incident after paying so much money for the car.
Multiple phantom braking incidents using cruise control on 2 lane roads when there is no hazard
Car slams on brakes at inappropriate times. Ex: 1. When a car makes a left turn across my travel lane several blocks away. 2. When a vehicle moves into my travel lane, going the same direction, several blocks in front of me. 3. For no reason I can discern. Cars behind me often honk. Could easily rear end me. Thankfully hasn't happened. You are welcome to inspect it. Don't think service center has tried to replicate the braking. No accident so not reports. Just very scary, thankfully. No warning lamps, etc. Anticipating question about dates, happens randomly, but pretty frequently. At least weekly. Speed also variable. Sometimes 35, sometimes 70, and in-between
We have had multiple incidents from July through Dec 2021when the vehicle is operating in cruise control and brakes hard for no good reason. Most of these are on highway 86 between Tucson and Sells. For some of those incidents there was an oncoming school bus, which may have been the visual trigger. For others we do not know the cause.
While using adaptive cruise control on I-25 making round trips between Albuquerque and Ft Collins, I have experienced numerous (dozens) phantom braking events. They are so frequent that I have stopped using adaptive cruise control. Almost all of these events occur when there is no traffic and no discernible reason for braking. In many cases, my first response is to look in the rearview mirror since I'm worried that if someone is behind me it would cause an accident since the stop is very unexpected. To date, there has not been a close call. The stopping varies between slight hesitations causing 1-2 MPH decrease to dramatic decreases of over 20 MPH. I have made numerous 'bug reports' using my voice in the car immediately after many of the events. I also scheduled a service call but was told that they examined the software and could find no problem. There is no warning of an impending braking event.
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