I was using the new version of the full self driving on surface streets. It was my second time using the system (yesterday was the first on the freeway and it seemed odd). Today it sped up and veered towards a car parked in the middle lane. I grabbed the wheel and thought it might have been an innocent error. Then a few minutes later the car took control again and tried to turn (quickly) into the side of a FedEx truck. At that point I knew the first miss wasn’t made up in my mind. I’m so glad I was paying attention, both would have been serious car damage - though not likely to be deadly because they were at low enough speeds.
2021 Tesla Model Y driver assistance complaints
Page 7 of 22: complaints 161 to 190 of 630, newest first, as owners wrote them.
I was driving on highway 395 in California on Jan 6th in the afternoon. It was a very clear day. I was driving north on the 2 lane portion of the road north of Adelanto and Kramer junction with cruise control on set to about 72. With no cars in sight in front of me the car hard braked with no cars in front of me. I disabled cruise control and later enabled it again. It happened again. I contacted Tesla and they determined there no hardware issue with the car. I am afraid to use cruise control now in the car.
Multiple phantom brakes in a day with nothing in front of the vehicle on an interstate. Terrified drivers behind as a result.
Car sufferers from “phantom braking” and will aggressively brake while adaptive cruise control is engaged for no apparent reason. No “regular” cruise control is available to over ride this.
When driving with Autopilot enabled, the brakes suddenly and sharply come on when I crest a hill. It's very disorienting and could be dangerous if the road is busy. The Autopilot should not be beta tested on consumers and other drivers like this.
I have experienced phantom braking numerous times with this car so I plugged in an arbitrary date below. Fortunately it has generally been on rural, open roads where there was nobody close behind me, but there have been at least a couple of times where there were cars behind me and the braking came close to causing accidents. It is also terrifying when it does happen and has nearly caused me to lose control of the car more than once as I attempted to compensate for the abrupt braking. I understand that you are already investigating this issue with these cars so you know the details. Generally it happens when I am on 2-lane roads that don't have good dividers. The cruse control seems to mistake oncoming cars in the opposite lane as being cars in my lane and it will slam on the brakes. It also seems to be triggered by highway mirages and shadows. I have managed to capture the issue on video at least once.
Tesla "Traffic Aware Cruise Control" occasionally unnecessarily applies brakes aggressively for no apparent reason when cruise control is in use. This presents a hazard to other driver's who may be behind the Tesla. This phenomena is well known to Tesla owners who have repeatedly posted about it in Tesla's Owners Forum. It is often referred to as "phantom braking". There is no option for the Tesla owner to disable the "Traffic Aware" aspect of Tesla's cruise control I believe Tesla could resolve this problem with a simple software update which would allow the Tesla owner to use cruise control normally without the "Traffic Aware" feature. The "Traffic Aware" feature is part of Tesla's problematic "Auto Pilot" feature. However, my Tesla is not equipped with "Auto Pilot". My Tesla is available for inspection upon request.
Phantom braking
I was driving on the freeway, no one was near me (I had full control of the car, it wasn’t on autopilot) and the car’s brakes deadlocked while I was traveling high way speed and then made a sharp left turn which caused me to crash into the center divide and then hydroplane across the entire freeway uncontrollably
11/29/23: vehicle begins to flash warning alerts (e.g., traction control disabled, lane departure warning unavailable), then power steering stopped working, and brakes pulsed violently when used (almost like ABS was active). Software update was available shortly thereafter, assumed this would remedy the situation. 12/5/23: same problems recur (loss of power steering, odd braking behavior, vehicle alerts). Vehicle was towed to Tesla for service. Tesla was able to ID the alerts in the vehicle history but could not identify the root cause. Took the vehicle one extended test drives, but was unable to cause the problems to recur. Tesla is unable to identify any further actions to prevent recurrence.
I had the adaptive cruise control (Autopilot) engaged on I95 and had it set to 60 MPH. Twice between a minute, the Model Y lowered the cruise speed to either 40 MPH and 25 MPH while on the interstate. No obstacles were in front of me to affect the cruise control system.
While in autopilot, the Tesla has been phantom braking repeaters. We noticed many time while driving at high speeds on the freeway, the Tesla model y will slam on the brakes for no apparent reason. There are no police reports
In Traffic Aware Cruise Control (aka Autopilot) car randomly changes the maximum set speed. This has caused a dangerous dramatic slowing of the car when highway driving. Car should not change speed setting without human input. I have video of this occurring.
The contact owns a 2021 Tesla Model Y. The contact stated while driving 75 MPH, the vehicle inadvertently stopped without warning. The vehicle was not diagnosed or repaired. The manufacturer was not contacted. The failure mileage was 1,600.
My Model Y applied the brakes suddenly when it was in Adaptive Cruise Control while I was driving in the interstate at 75 mph. This caused the vehicle to decelerate very abruptly. There was no vehicle in front of me and no obvious debris in the road. This happened several times on a trip from California to Kansas and back. On one occasion , I had just pulled back into the right lane after passing several tractor trailer rigs going 70 mph. I had to tromp on the accelerator to avoid being rear-ended.
Phantom Breaking. On Saturday -12/3/22, around 3.50 PM CST en route to Arlington on HWY 360, I experienced phantom breaking twice in quick succession. I was driving on autopilot at 70MPH and suddenly the car applied brakes and it was very scary to me and all my family. After the second event, I stopped using the pilot and drove with manual control.
The contact owns a 2021 Tesla Model Y. The contact stated that the display screen would intermittently fail to operate as needed, without warning. The contact also stated that the power windows failed to operate as needed. The contact had taken the vehicle to the Service Center on multiple occasions for various updates; however, the power window failure persisted after each update. The contact recently received notification of the federal safety agency Campaign Number: 22V702000 (Visibility). The contact stated that the back-up camera was displaying a distorted image while the vehicle was in reverse(R). The vehicle was not repaired. The failure mileage was approximately 9,400.
I own a 2021 Tesla Model Y. I took possession of it on August 7, 2021, in Santa Barbara, CA. Ever since, I have had more than 1000 instances of automatic emergency braking (phantom braking) episodes while using cruise control or autopilot. The experiences of severe phantom braking have been terrifying. The car often slams on its brakes for no apparent reasons on all highways and freeways, mostly where no cars or obstacles are present. I worry about getting rear-ended, which could lead to injury or death. My Tesla has been in for repair five times, and the technicians say they cannot fix it, that only a software update can solve the phantom braking problem They've been promising a software update since August 2021. After 16 months and five service appointments, I expect the problem would be solved by now. It hasn't. Please force Tesla to remedy this very hazardous safety problem. Let me know what you are doing to force Tesla to fix the problem.
On a long trip on I-70 across Colorado and Kansas I experienced 4 instances of "phantom" braking while using cruise control. I had set the speed at 78 and the car aggressively braked itself as if there was an object in the road when there was no object or reason to brake. In each instance if a car had been following closely they likely would have crashed into me. It also causes panic to the driver when the car aggressively brakes. I am contacting Tesla service today to report this issue and hope that it will be addressed but there has not been any inspection at this point. There was no waring or issues with the car prior to this and it has never happened to me before. It only occurred when using cruise control as I do not have full self driving and was also not using lane assist.
I was driving about 65 mph on the highway with my Tesla 2021 Model “Y” in “Traffic-Aware Cruise Control” (not Auto Pilot) when, for no apparent reason, the car decelerated rapidly. This happened four times during a 1 hour trip from Boston to New Hampshire. No accidents occurred due to this incident but it was very concerning. This is not a new problem but it is occurring more often since the software was updated to include “Tesla Vision” instead of radar. I did not report this to Tesla because they are already aware of “Phantom Braking” issues with my model.
I was driving on highway when the car in front of me brake hard. Tesla failed to detect imminent crash and did not provide warning AND emergency braking. The vehicle has been recently serviced in tesla service center. There were no other warning lamps / messages / symptoms of the problem prior to the failure.
When using cruise control, the car will suddenly brake for no reason.
I own a 2021 Tesla Model Y. I took possession of it on August 7, 2021, in Santa Barbara, Ca. Ever since, I have had more than 1000 instances of automatic emergency braking (phantom braking) episodes while using cruise control or autopilot. On January 26, 2022, I had 47 episodes, in just a couple of hours. This is typical. The experiences of severe phantom braking have been terrifying. The car often slams on its brakes for no apparent reason, many times on a four lane highway, or on a freeway with no cars or obstacles around. Recently, I had 10 phantom braking episodes within one mile of highway driving. Multiple times, I worried about getting rear-ended. It has been in for repair five times, and the technicians are animate that a software update is coming very soon (they've been promising that immediately after taking possession of the Tesla). After 15 months and five service center appointments, I expected the problem to be resolved by now. It hasn't. Can you please force Tesla to fix this problem immediately? Please provide a response identifying actions you are taking to resolve this very important safety matter.
The contact owns a 2021 Tesla Model Y. The contact stated that while driving approximately 75 MPH with the cruise control activated, the vehicle abruptly decelerated to approximately 35 MPH. The contact indicated that during the incident no other vehicles or objects were nearby to cause the vehicle to suddenly decelerate. Additionally, there were no messages or warning lights displayed or illuminated. The cause of the failure was not yet determined. The manufacturer and local dealer were notified of the failure, but no assistance was offered. The failure mileage was 20,000.
The contact owns a 2021 Tesla Model Y. The contact stated that while driving at highway speeds with the cruise control activated, the vehicle would independently slow down without incident. Upon investigation, the contact discovered that the failure was referred to as phantom braking. The service center had yet to be notified of the failure. The manufacturer was made aware of the failure. The vehicle had yet to be repaired. The failure mileage was approximately 1,000.
We were driving 65 miles per hour using cruise control on a flat road with no cars in front or behind us for hundreds of yards on both sides of a two-way highway. Suddenly, and for no apparent reason, our Tesla applied the brakes hard as though it was trying to avoid hitting an obstacle on the road. Within a second our speed dropped to about 30mph at which point our Tesla released the brake and accelerated back up to 60 miles and hour before I shut off cruise control.
When i was traveling at speed around 70mph on highway. Tesla has applied emergency brakes and locked the steering, which made telsa rotate(spinned) 3 times on its own and stopped.luckily no vehicles were near on either ways. The vehicle was all the way stopped on opposite road and I was able to start after some seconds it stopped and started my driving. No vehicles were near or nothing approached to apply emergency brakes. When contacted telsa they told to schedule service appointment and no help was given.
On many occasions while driving on a freeway near a feeder road the car automatically breaks by itself. I have come close to being rear ended several times. It appears the vehicle turns this feature on at the beginning of each new trip even after I have turned it off and the consumer must turn it off every time they begin to drive. I have also had instances of going around a bend and the car thinks it sees something, usually the barrier dividing traffic and breaks by itself.
I drove from Flagstaff, AZ to Las Vegas, NV on 10/26/2022. I attempted to put my car in AutoPilot (adaptive cruise control) around a dozen times during this 260 mile trip. Every 10-25 miles the car would brake extremely hard forcing the passengers to lunge forward as if the brakes were being slammed. In every case, the car was in the same lane (no lane changes) with nothing but open road ahead. In most cases there wasn't a vehicle in front or to either side of me (only behind me). No corrective messages or indications appeared on the screen to explain this action. The only corrective action I could take was to hit the accelerator to avoid a rear end collision. When I contacted Tesla about the issue, they checked the logs during this trip and found no faults in the system to explain this behavior.
Experienced phantom braking 6 times. There was no warning Automatic emergency braking system engages when there is no other vehicle around. Also experienced phantom braking with automatic emergency braking system turned off but cruise control was on, 2 times. Tesla shop replaced some type of coolant sensors and recalibrated mirrors but phantom braking still occurring. Technician took vehicle out on highway and did not experience phantom braking, and suggested more monitoring from me using "bug report" on screen to document incidents. Currently I avoid cruise control and automatic emergency braking system because of the potential of being rear-ended with rapid and unplanned slow down. This is a dangerous issue.
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