2018 Tesla Model 3 FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE
Owner-reported problems and safety issues filed with NHTSA. Review common failures, severity levels, and complaint trends over time.
Complaint Timeline
Chronological view of owner reports
As I enabled the FSD Beta ADAS system, the vehicle accelerated inappropriately quickly away from a 90 degree stop. While continuing on the road, the vehicle braked inappropriately for oncoming cars within their lane, inappropriately braked within intersections, inappropriately braked for turn radius, and was unable to avoid a closed road marked with signs and cones. Steering input was erratic, and I believe the vehicle created an unsafe condition for myself and the vehicle following me. There were no AEB or FCW alerts, the system did not display any error messages, and appeared to be operating fully.
Car slammed on brakes as we were overtaking truck. Car may have mistaken truck's shadow for an object; this was around noon on a clear sunny day. Braking was sharp enough to cause an accident had someone been following us closely.
While driving on a four-lane Interstate Highway and using the adaptive cruise control, the car suddenly decelerated with no obvious cause. We were well behind the car in front of us -- the cruise control was set to 7 car lengths. I pressed the accelerator as soon as I could to resume speed. Fortunately, there was no vehicle close behind us, but a vehicle closely tailgating might have crashed into us.
Car frequently brakes for no apparent reason when driving on the freeway. This happens when either adaptive cruise control only or autopilot is used. For example, it has happened on a divided highway during daytime, in good weather, with clear lane markings, with no obstructions. It also happens sometimes when certain road signs come into view, such as "Caution" or "Men Working". There was no phantom braking problem with the car prior to 2021, when a software change was made. It is scary and dangerous for the car to slam on the brakes without any reason. I have stopped using adaptive cruise control or autopilot because of the risk of being rear-ended on the freeway.
Constant "phantom braking" occurrences despite great conditions (sunny, no wind, good visibility, low traffic) during a road trip that was two hours both ways. Typically happened when coming to the crest of small hills, or when "road mirages" due to light refraction, or when a car in the distance just became noticed by the vehicle. Happened both on divided highway and two lane highways. Several braking occurrences were pronounced enough to be likened to not quite slamming on the brakes, but definitely applying them firmly. This, besides being terrifying and attention grabbing, itself a safety issue, it could also mean close following vehicles may have to react in such a way to also apply brakes heavily at highway speeds which could cause a rear end collision or swerving to avoid my vehicle. I also get little to no warning it's about to happen, until it does, no alarms go off, and in general it was noticing the hills, mirages, and vehicles just coming into the car's "sight" that the correlation of the phantom braking was occurring. I know this is known by Tesla, and I am going to take it in for a winter tire swap this week, and let the dealer know it is a major issue with my car.
My Model 3 often breaks for no reason when using autopilot on freeways. Even though there is no vehicles around my car, the car "phantom brakes" often causing me to slow down extremely fast with no warning.
On June 1, 2022, we left on a roadtrip to CA from UT. Our Model 3 kept having incidents of "phantom braking," in which the Traffic-Aware Cruise Control and Autopilot systems would suddenly, inexplicably cause the car to slam on the brakes, and sometimes even flash a "red" steering wheel and an alarm with a warning that there was an object ahead —when there was NOT! This happened at least a dozen times en route on Highway 95 in Nevada, and continued to happen throughout our roadtrip on other highways until we returned home one week later on June 8, 2022. I have experienced this problem several times over the past year, and numerous other owners have already submitted similar complaints to NHTSA. Indeed, the TACC and AP behaviors are now significantly WORSE than when we first took delivery of the car over 4 years ago in April 2018. It is as though the car suffers hiccups, spasms, Tourette's Syndrome without any warning. I fear that one of these times we will be rear ended by a car behind or to the side of us. I can only speculate as to why this has started to happen, but suspect it is because Tesla decided to stop using its radar sensors a year ago and now only relies on its cameras. These incidents truly frighten my wife to death, so much so that she wants me to get rid of the car. I can't say I blame her, as the problems with the car's TACC and AP systems are now making it unsafe on our highways. If Tesla doesn't restore reliable, dependable, safe TACC and AP in the near future, I will get rid of the car.
Newer software disables existing radar in the car; this "Tesla Vision" is objectively worse at providing automatic braking response correctly, often scared literally of it's own shadown Newer cars don't even include the rdar, an ill-advised cost saving initiated by Tesla
regularly when autopilot or cruise control are engaged, the emergency braking will abruptly slow the vehicle when no object is on the road, highway, or interstate. This creates an unsafe environment when vehicles behind you are not following at a safe distance. We have had several instances a month where the vehicle will slow from 75 to 30 in a few seconds and require human intervention to speed up. This issue has been ongoing since we received the vehicle almost 30,000 miles ago.
I was driving on a one way street when the car suddenly stopped. I was not at an or close to an intersection. There was a pedestrian waiting on the side of the road, standing between cars. He was not in my way. He was not even close to the vehicle. The car sounded audible warning and came to a complete stop. I believe this was the reason the vehicle stopped. This is the 2nd time since my 3 year ownership that this has happened. I provided Tesla with time stamps of the event during my service visit. They told me this is normal function of the vehicle. Just reporting this in case there is a more serious underlying issue that warrants additional investigation.
Constant phantom breaking while using cruise control, autopilot or FSD. A reoccurring problem that happens more and more often.
My Tesla 3 suddenly braked while driving on the road from about 40 mph to 10 mph. There was nothing obstructing my car from the front or sides. It was a scary experience. My neck was jolted forward and the seatbelt pressed very tightly against my chest. I immediately scheduled for service with Tesla. I then got a call from them and was told I should be okay to drive my car until my scheduled appointment a week from now! How is this not an emergency?!
While on auto assist car engages in phantom braking
Autopilot failed and crashed into another car while changing lane didn't detect coming in left lane and tried to changed and crashed into it. It put everyone in the car in life threatening risk
Every time we have it on autopilot on the tollway, we experience phantom braking at the same location regardless if we are going south or north. It is dangerous if there is a car behind us.
Going down an undivided single lane each way roadway at 55 MPH car suddenly hard braked and car behind me almost hit me. Most of these I don't report since it's normal for Tesla FSD or adaptive cruise to be incapable of maintaining reasonable speed for a day trip - this was worse than usual and almost resulted in an accident.
Very recently Tesla had a standard software update for the car. They happen all the time. There was no warning with this update (or any update I’ve seen) about removing paid for features if you install the update. This one disabled my radar and turned my radar based autopilot I specifically bought this car for into vision based autopilot. I paid $15k for full self driving and never requested the beta to use it because I specifically did not want to disable my radar because of safety concerns. They did it anyway now, and without warning. It phantom brakes now all the time and it never used to and the general autopilot performance is worse and unsafe. I can’t use it reliably anymore and Tesla refuses to downgrade the firmware or do anything to re-enable my radar and I’m absolutely livid. This is a $75k car that I got for this one feature and they took its functionality away from me without warning and won’t give it back. Vision based autopilot is not safe and I am afraid anytime I use it now. Radar based autopilot felt so safe it was relaxing much of the time.
Traffic aware cruise control (TACC) frequently and sometimes violently brakes when there are no obstacles. This potentially puts the safety of myself, passengers, and other drivers at risk during these events. This events occur without warning. Since the purchase of my vehicle in 2018 the events have gotten worse through software updates. I would expect improvements through subsequent updates not a regression.
I intermittently get an on-screen message “automatic emergency braking is disabled.” Adaptive cruise control and auto-steering are disabled and I am unable to engage either one. Randomly the problem will resolve itself with no intervention from me - usually a day or two later. I have taken the car to Tesla service twice and they are unable to resolve the issue. On the last visit the service technician said that it is a firmware issue.
On Sept. 9th, around 9:05pm, my wife was on the driver's seat, FSD was engaged. so the Tesla model 3 car was driving itself on highway 395 close to susanville. Then suddenly a car coming, we had a head-on collision, the other car's front left hit our front left. The other driver passed away, my wife and I got serious injuries, we are recovering from 3 surgeries. 1.FSD did not give alert or warning, 2.FSD did not break the car, 3.FSD did not slowing down the car 4.FSD did not change direction of the car. 5.FSD just kept the speed and direction. “Disabling FSD” needs time, my wife did nothing, because there was only few 10th of a second. But I am afraid if she was driving without engaging FSD, she might be able to steer the car slightly to the right to avoid the accident. CHP will pull data from the car in the next few days. We would like to request NHTSA has a full investigation of the accident. Attached please find a form we received from CHP, a picture of both cars, and driving data downloaded from Tesla web site.
I was using Enhanced Autopilot on Tesla Model 3. It breaks automatically in middle of road for no reason even when there is no object in front of it. Its a life threatening situation because the vehicle behind my car will not have enough breaking distance and time at high speeds. It happens almost every month and specially under the reflection of bridges. I complained to service center and employees just ask exact time when it occurred and if exact time is not provided than Tesla employees does not do anything to resolve the issue. Looks like Tesla is putting many lives in danger.
When driving on local roads and the interstate the card suddenly brakes for no reason when using auto pilot or full self driving. Sometimes it seems to be triggered by shadows from trees or other objects on the road and other times for no reason at all. I have been going 45 mph and the car suddenly braked to 30mph. I have been on the open interstate doing 70 mph when the car will suddenly and violently brake when there is a car on your bumper and this is very dangerous. If you dont keep your foot over the gas while driving and force the car to speed up it will cause an accident bc it will brake until the car is stopped probably. Somone needs to look into tesla and the phantom braking on auto pilot and full self driving. i have owned this car for almost 4 years and over the last 1 year this has gotten progressivley worse when they switched from using the radar sensor in the front to camera only vision called tesla vision. it is unsafe and im sure it's causing accidents today and needs to be investigated since Tesla cant seem to fix it.
My car is equipped with forward-facing radar, but ever since Tesla turned it off in favor of "Tesla Vision" my Autopilot/TACC experience has been greatly worsened. The car suddenly (and very unsettlingly) slams on the brakes on the highway or city traffic (I have FSD Beta) for anything from shadows, to hills/inclines, to curves, or minor harmless debris (shopping bags) in the road. This has not yet caused an accident but has almost come close. Other issues: - FSD Beta, when engaged, forces the computer to have control over the high-beams and windshield wipers. The car obsessively flashes the high beams whenever possible, including on well-lit city streets. On multiple occasions this has triggered road rage in surrounding drivers because they think I'm flashing my brights at them for no reason. There is no reason to engage the brights in a well-lit urban environment. - Forward Collision Warning has become completely unreliable and routinely warns for cars that are not in my lane or in front of my car directly. This makes me more likely to just ignore the warning.
When using autopilot on the freeway there are multiple incidents where the brakes are aggressively applied for no apparent reason
Many times when I am driving using the adaptive speed control the vehicle will suddenly brake very hard, slamming on the brake, scaring the driver and all passengers in the car. When this happens, there were no other vehicles near our vehicle at the time. If another car was behind mine at this time,I feel that it would surely have caused an accident. I have documented these occurrences each time and brought to the attention of Tesla Service department.
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Quick Summary
The 2018 Tesla Model 3 has 70 FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE complaints on file. 6 crashes have been reported. Review the timeline above for detailed owner experiences.