NHTSA Complaint #11633132 — 2024 FREIGHTLINER CASCADIA

When driving in highway traffic at moderate to high speeds (as well as low speeds), the truck will often accelerate with (and towards) a vehicle that is less than 1 second ahead of the truck. Certainly this often happens when there is not a safe distance between the truck and the next vehicle. The trucks systems in no way seem to expect that the next vehicle could slam on brakes at any moment. I have had this happen many times when a vehicle merges too close in front of me and then accelerates. The truck will accelerate with the vehicle (that the truck is now tailgating), even though there is slowing or stopping traffic directly ahead of the vehicle the truck is following. The Safety Director at Tyson Foods, Robert Carl, told me in a conference call about the unsafe flaws in the truck, that these Freightliner systems are programmed to "try" to maintain about a 2.5 second following distance. Even this is patently unsafe. Driver safety guidelines (FMCSA) are: "If you are driving below 40 mph, you should leave at least one second for every 10 feet of vehicle length. For a typical tractor-trailer, this results in 4 seconds between you and the leading vehicle. For speeds over 40 mph, you should leave one additional second." It would appear that Daimler/Freightliner may have used Autonomous Driving software that was designed for cars, and has tried to "adjust" it to work in tractor-trailers. That is speculation, but based on the supposed target following distance, that may be correct. 2.5 seconds is certainly too close, and the distances of less than 1 second that I have commonly seen are not acceptable in any truck.