Tesla's "phantom brake" complaints occur frequently The US regulator said it had opened an investigation

Recently, according to foreign media reports, the number of complaints about Tesla's "phantom brake" on the website of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has shown rapid growth, according to the foreign media investigation, the complaints related to Tesla's "phantom brake" have risen to 107 in the past three months, compared with only 34 in the first 22 months. The timing coincided with Tesla's decision to stop using radar sensors in its vehicles and instead adopt a camera-only system.

Tesla Model 3

"Phantom braking" means that after Tesla starts the advanced driver assistance system, the vehicle will brake sharply because of the misjudgment of the road conditions, which will interfere with the riding experience, and will also have a serious impact on the driving of the rear vehicle, and it is easy to cause rear-end accidents and pose a threat to driving safety.

In the eyes of some professionals, Tesla's previous practices have not effectively inhibited the occurrence of "phantom braking" behavior, but have exacerbated this phenomenon, Phil Koopman, a professor at Neki Mellon University who focuses on the safety of self-driving cars, said that the emergence of this phenomenon is mainly related to the fact that developers have not set the decision threshold correctly. In his view, the effective way to solve this problem is to use multiple different sensors and have them cross-check between them, just like other companies, not only with cameras, but also with different types of sensors such as lidar. For example, some bags floating on the road may look like a truck to the camera, so it is easy to cause the wrong judgment of emergency braking, but if it can be further judged by lidar, the "phantom braking" scene can be avoided.

NHTSA said it had received the complaints and was reviewing them. It is also in discussions with Tesla and is reviewing other data sources. Not long ago, NHTSA announced that Tesla will recall more than 810,000 vehicles due to buzzer problems, which is also the largest recall in Tesla's history.