2024 Tesla Model Y: brakes engage by themselves (phantom braking)

Filed Feb 24, 2026 · Driver assistance · MN

When Adaptive cruise control is on random phantom braking occurs. It can be very severe and drops speeds of 20-30 miles within seconds. Occurs on highways and is random and occurs daily. ( multiple times in a day) Has been serviced 4 times and Tesla cleans the cameras and adjusts them. It has progressively gotten worse and Tesla said don't bring it in because they cannot fix it. They describe it as a software update.

Filed Aug 31, 2025 · Brakes · CA · 1 injury

Phantom braking happened. This is the 3rd time to my car. This time, my car stopped automatically when I was already decelerating close to 2-5 mph and the car in front was very far away. I was not using FSD nor autopilot. The emergency auto stop sign came up out of nowhere and my car jerked really hard and my child in the back experienced the jerk and this injured his shoulder.

Filed Oct 19, 2024 · Driver assistance · NH

I have had multiple incidents of “phantom braking” when using traffic aware cruise control and auto steer. It usually happens on one lane state highways with opposite direction traffic, sometimes with turns or hills. The vehicle has slammed on the brakes without warning, sometimes the warning tone also sounds. Each time there was absolutely no danger, nothing abnormal. On a couple occasions there was traffic behind me, and it must have scared them. They probably thought it was a hard brake check. If I wasn’t able to quickly over ride the braking with the accelerator it very easily could have caused an accident. On two occasions my pregnant wife was in the car and it scared her very much. I am personally afraid to use it now, knowing it’s going to slam on the brakes is nerve wracking and UNSAFE. Tesla does not seem to care about addressing the issue, rather putting all eggs in the “full self driving” basket instead of improving this very obvious safety defect. From reading online forums it seems to affect just about everyone. I’m hoping their engineers address it and they release a software update correcting it, but as mentioned above it doesn’t seem to be on their list of priorities; the problem has been happening for several years now and has resulted in at least one known fatality. Hopefully the federal safety agency can light a fire under them and have this scary safety defect addressed.

Filed Oct 17, 2024 · Brakes, Driver assistance · MI

My car slammed on the brakes on the highway this morning at 75 mph. A box truck was following me but thankfully he didn't hit me. I was in what Tesla calls Traffic Aware Cruise Control (TACC) at the time and quickly brought the car out of TACC and hit the accelerator to get me back up to speed so I didn't pose a danger to other drivers on the highway. I dont know exactly how much my car slowed, but it was enough to throw me forward in my seat. There were no vehicles in front of me at the time. This was a classic example of "phantom braking", which is talked about a lot in the Tesla community. This is my 2nd report of phantom braking to the federal safety agency.

Filed Sep 15, 2024 · Acceleration, Driver assistance · WI

While using adaptive cruise control the vehicle regularly decelerates for no reason and without warning "phantom braking". I experience this about once a week, but experienced it multiple times on a longer drive this weekend. The unexplained abrupt braking could result in being rear-ended by another vehicle.