NHTSA complaint: 2023 TESLA MODEL Y — FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE: ADAPTIVE CRUISE CONTROL
On April 16, 2026 around 7:30pm CT, I was driving a Tesla Model Y 2023 on I-35 near downtown Austin. There was an extreme traffic jam, I turned on the Auto Pilot so it can cruise by itself without touching anything. It worked for a while, but suddenly it veered off to a lane on my right side, crashing into a large truck on the front right. This damaged all the front and passenger side fender. The car had to be towed. I used this feature many times in the past, it always stayed within the lane. This time it acted erroneously. This should not be marketed as "auto pilot" that people may lose their lives due to insufficient safety guard in the system. Fortunately the traffic was moving very slowly, no one was hurt in my case. I got all incident data downloaded from Tesla to prove its fault. Based on the data, the Autopilot system had a fault starting at 12:50pm and 14:55pm, and was disabled at 15:59pm, but there were no warning as I turned it on when I drove on I-35 around 7pm. See the attached data file (highlighted rows, the claim system doesn't allow the original Excel file to be uploaded).
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration — Office of Defects Investigation