NHTSA Complaint #11449956 — 2017 TESLA MODEL S

In the last couple of months the incidences of random braking have increased. Usually this has been on the freeway when using adaptive cruise control and often when there are no other vehicles around. However last week I was driving manually (no cruise control or “self driving”) on a two lane road. My foot was on the accelerator pedal, and had been since the last stop light about a half mile before, when the car suddenly and vigorously applied emergency braking. I immediately pushed the accelerator to the floor to avoid being rear ended, but the car continued braking almost to a standstill before I had control again. There were no vehicles in front of me, however there were vehicles in the oncoming lane. They were not near the center line. I turned off the automatic emergency braking at that time because I felt it was dangerous to leave it active. I would additionally state that Tesla has a habit of rearranging the touch screen so that you no longer know where to find certain controls and is dangerous because it’s then necessary to take your eyes off the road to figure out how it works now. Finally, I’ve been driving Tesla vehicles since 2016 and I love them. I paid for the “full self driving” option years ago and a “beta” version became available a few months ago. This is not ready for prime time. If I wanted thrills I would go to an amusement park. Even more basic things like auto lane change often don’t work because the cameras are constantly getting blinded when the sun is low in the sky. Here in the north that is a good part of the day during the winter. I don’t see how their system can ever be made to work with the existing hardware. I wish there was a way to go back to a firmware version that worked better instead of them always tinkering with it. I feel like a guinea pig