First of all, i was pulling the tesla out of our garage. i was completely out maneuvering the car to make it parallel to the right side of the street when suddenly, i felt the car moved extra backward. fortunately, it did not hit the neighbors' parked cars. the move startled me. and surprised my husband and son who are passengers at that time. my husband blurted, "what are you doing?". i replied, "i'm driving, i did not do anything extra to make that move. i wondered and also asked, "how did that happen?" and my husband said "i don't know you're the one driving, be careful." my response was, "i am being careful!". my husband thought i pressed the accelerator hard but i know i did not. the conversation almost lead to an argument but we somehow diffused the topic. i don't want to argue and ruin the mood because we were on our way to our son's soccer game that morning. to make the story short. i continued driving until we reached our destination. i chose to park on the right side of the parking lot. as i was slowly pulling the car in, i felt the car suddenly accelerated. at the blink of an eye, our car hit another car parked in front of us and the car next to it. i felt that the car controlled my move before i could even react. for 20 years of driving, i have never hit an accelerator by mistake or caused any collision. i have driven this vehicle a couple of times before this incident happened and i drove and parked it the way i did previously. the unintended acceleration was something new that day. i am deeply concerned with the safety of this vehicle for my family and others.
When i shift the car into drive and use the accelerator pedal to move the car forward and it works fine. when i release the accelerator pedal, the car accelerate and requires me to brake. this occurs at low speed. i have taken the car into tesla and they said user error. the cruise control engages when i shift into drive. this has occurred several times since i have purchased the car
On 1/17/2010, at 12:12pm, i departed my house in norwell. after 1.65 miles, between 99 forest ave and river street (approximately 50 feet from river street), i released my foot from the friction brake, and the car accelerated on its own toward river street. i put my foot back onto the friction brake, and it stopped. the car was not in auto-pilot mode. i am not aware of cruise control being on. in any case, if it was on, i did not put it on on purpose, and further, it should not have been on since i had my foot on the friction brake pedal just before the event. enclosed is an image of my trip log showing that my drive started at 12:12pm. also enclosed is a map showing that it was 1.65 miles from the start of my drive. i do not have dash-cam footage of this since more than one hour has passed and i did not manually tag it when it occurred because i did not know of an investigation at that time.
While navigating on autopilot on the freeway the car took the intended exit ramp, however never slowed down until i had to intervene. reminiscent of the characteristics which led to the recent fatal crash reported over the last week.
Driving in freeway fast lane in light traffic at 10:30 am on overcast morning with tesla adaptive cruise control set for 70 mph and 4-car following distance. the car in front moved 1 lane to the right leaving no cars ahead. my car accelerated gently to 70 and then as i approached an overpass the car suddenly braked (or went to regeneration) and slowed instantly to about 40 mph when i was able to apply the accelerator and return to surrounding traffic speed and move right to the next lane and recovered from the shock and surprise of what other tesla owners refer to as "phanton braking". i was fortunate that no other cars weren't following me or they likely would have crashed in the back of my car. i spoke with other tesla owners who report the same random, surprise, powerful braking when approaching overpasses.