NHTSA Complaint #11421091 — 2021 TESLA MODEL Y

Wiper failure when set to automatic (rain-sensing) when vision system shut down due to poor visibility. A little background: I've been driving for 50+ years, about 1.5M total miles, most of it commuting. I'm a software engineer with 45+ years of experience, mostly in embedded systems. Problem drive: most settings, including headlights and wipers, on auto. Autopilot was on. Drove into a heavy rainstorm, auto wipers worked well, speeding up until they were on high. Traffic speed dropped from 70+ to less than 35 due to rain. Drove into a band of torrential rain. Saw a pop-up on the screen that said something like autopilot turning off due to diminished visibility. Autopilot (speed control) then turned off. THEN THE WIPERS SHUT OFF. Let's see, guy designing vision system: can't figure out anything from camera images, so let's warn user and shut off stuff that relies on the camera. Like autopilot. Wipers? Leave them in the last state? Nah, turn off the enable signal to the auto wiper state, too. Torrential downpour, almost no visibility, and my wipers just shut off. I frantically kept pressing the wiper button on the turn signal stalk to force a couple of swipes and force the wiper pop-up menu, then take my eyes off the road with possibly someone stopping right in front of me (yes, I slowed down) to do hand-eye coordination on the wiper pop-up to hit the manual setting full speed button! Related to Tesla Model S/X recall for touchscreen failure disabling defog/defrost. Proper design requires hard controls (not just touchscreen) for safety-critical items, like lights, wipers, defog/defrost. That's why a hard control for hazard flashers is required. I've spent years designing life-critical medical systems. They all have hazard mitigation matrix sections - analyze possible fault modes, assign chance of happening and severity of impact if they happen, then have a mitigation strategy. This seems to be a system design flaw