At approximately 9am on the morning of 1/4/18, i was driving in autopilot on the 405 heading north to my office in santa monica in my tesla model s and the car simply ran into the barrier wall on the left side of the car pool lane at 75mph. it was absolutely crazy! i have contacted tesla about the accident several times, but they are simply not interested. i just read about an accident that the u.s. national transportation safety board is investigating where the same thing happened and the driver died. i believe my accident could have ended the same way and i think it needs to be taken very seriously.
I purchased the tesla model s on 10/17 with 'autopilot' hardware and features i've consistently used autopilot on the highway during the first month i've had the vehicle. the autopilot feature uses cameras and sensors to maintain speed and lane and avoid collisions. this car also features anti-collision features that are supposed to engage even when autopilot is not engaged, to detect both an object in front of the car and brake, as well as detect objects on either side that the car may be headed to collide with and swerve away. this features were all enabled at time of the accident. at the time of accident, i had autopilot engaged for approx 10 minutes prior to accident. i was still watching the road but periodically looking at my phone as well. before the accident i had looked down at my phone for a period of time i'm not sure about. i didn't think it was longer than a few seconds, but i can't be certain. when i looked up the semi was merging in front of me. i would guess that the semi's trailer was perhaps 3-4 feet in my line, and i was maybe 50-100 feet away. so it was less than 1 second prior to impact. it was so quick there was no time for me to even hit the brake and the car was not braking or swerving to avoid collision either. essentially, the auto pilot drove me right into the left rear of a semi tractor trailer at 70 mph and the sensors/cameras for some reason did not detect this collision. *tr