Random braking

[Bmac]

It seems lately with the latest 2020.4.1 and now 2020.8.1 updates I have experienced more of this random braking issue with absolutely nothing in sight as to a possible reason of why the car would want to abruptly stop. It does not seem to matter if I am on autosteer or just adaptive cruise. This just unnerves my wife. My normal reaction is to simply give the gas pedal a little pump.

My questions hopefully to the Tesla experts and possibly engineers who may be lurking…
1. What could the car be noticing for it to take such a drastic action?
2. Is there any way that we can report issues like this (with approximate times and locations) to Tesla development? Or,
3. Does this type of situation get automatically picked up on an error log which becomes available to development?

In prior reports of this on this site I have read about the random braking issue from users driving on interstates. That would be even scarier traveling at 70 mph, but in my cases, I am usually on well marked backroads and sometimes divided local roads. There is one spot that that always causes this issue and I am only driving about 35 mph.

 

[2101Guy]

does it occur at a time of day when there is a certain shadow on the road? Thats been my experience while traveling under a certain overpass at a certain time of day when on autopilot

 

[D.E.]

I see it. I only use the automatic steering and the traffic aware cruise control on divided highways. There’s no explanation as far as I can tell, at first it was with shadows on the road in late afternoon near overpasses but now it seems to occur with absolutely nothing I can see that should cause it.

I have opinions, though. There’s nothing to back this up, but I suspect it is due to the high profile cases of Teslas running into fixed objects, fire engines, etc. I think they’ve become overcautious and the algorithms cause the random braking. It is unnerving, my wife isn’t impressed with the car when it does things like this. Additionally it’s a traffic hazard if someone is following closely. I hit the accelerator to quickly restore my speed but it is still a very sudden unexpected drop of 10-15 MPH before I can respond.

I’d like to have an answer for you. I don’t. I think it will change with software updates, as it seems to have done in the past. Honestly, they can’t fix this fast enough for me. Having my pristeen car walloped from behind because of a faulty beta software line of code would be awful. Right now it’s a fact of life with the TACC and auto steering, I think everyone’s car does it.