According to the latest reports, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is currently evaluating the potential safety hazards and risks of Tesla’s “ghost brakes”, which is because the department has received this information in the past three months. There were 107 complaints from class owners, compared with 34 in the previous 22 months.
Phantom braking is actually the effect of the car’s automatic braking technology, which enables the vehicle to apply the brakes at breakneck speed when necessary. “Ghost brakes” have plagued Tesla for a long time, especially recently the brand’s Autopilot Assist and Fully Self-Driving test systems have received additional attention from U.S. safety groups.
That’s in part because Tesla has eliminated radar-sensing units on its cars and announced that it will only rely on camera imaging systems going forward. Earlier, Consumer Reports and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) re-evaluated cars using pure vision technology and retracted their previous recommendation that vehicles be equipped with radar sensors.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said in the past that the ghost brake problem goes away when the vehicle’s radar is removed. However, judging by recent complaints from Tesla owners, that wish does not appear to have come true.
A spokesperson for NHTSA said recently: “NHTSA is aware of complaints it has received regarding the forward collision avoidance feature of Tesla models and is reviewing such complaints based on a risk assessment process. If data indicates a possible risk, NHTSA will Take immediate action.”
It’s worth noting, though, that while the NHTSA will investigate the “ghost brake” issue, it doesn’t mean that Tesla models actually have an associated safety risk, as the NHTSA complaint is fully public and comparative Free, so regardless of whether the user’s car is actually in a similar situation, the problem can be reported to the department, and only in cases where there are too many complaints, NHTSA will further investigate whether it is a serious safety incident.
Tesla recalled about 12,000 vehicles in October 2021 due to similar issues. The company said that while it has not received any reports of collisions caused by the issue, the “ghost brakes” have the potential to increase the likelihood of rear-end collisions.