The Feds have received at least 4,228 safety complaints related to Teslas<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Billionaire and sister to former U.S. secretary of transportation Elaine Chao, Angela Chao, drowned in her Tesla Model X after accidentally reversing into a pond on a 900-acre Texas ranch last month. She\u2019d reversed her Tesla Model X when she meant to drive forward during a K turn \u2014 a common problem with the vehicle among owners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Business Insider found 12 complaints related to the Tesla reverse function in a database of automobile consumer complaints kept by the US Department of Transportation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Seven of those complaints were from people who said the way Tesla had designed the gearshift was confusing, resulting in them sometimes putting the car in drive when they meant to put it in reverse or vice versa. The other five complaints were from people who said their cars appeared to switch between drive and reverse without warning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The issue has also found its way to Tesla forums, where one Tesla owner in 2022 wrote that they had accidentally \u201cshifted to reverse instead of drive by mistake\u201d three times in the two years they\u2019d had the car.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another Tesla owner wrote in 2022 that they \u201cjust nearly had an accident\u201d because of confusion over how to put the car in reverse. \u201cWithin the first month of having my car I did something similar,\u201d another user responded.\ufeff<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Elon Musk’s Tesla pay, YouTube’s ad problem, and a $25,000 Jeep EV: The most popular tech stories<\/p>\n\n\n\n
BI doesn\u2019t clarify whether Chao was driving a pre-2021 vehicle, or the post-2021 vehicle with the goofy touch screen and complete lack of indicator and PRND stalks \u2014 but because the issue revolves around the screen shifting problem, we can assume it was the latter. However, BI found complaints about both modes of gear shifting:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Prior to late 2021, drivers of all Teslas shifted into reverse by depressing the brake pedal and flicking a gear stalk to the right of the steering wheel up \u2014 a motion that some complainants said was confusing because, for some models and years, the same motion on the gear stalk disengages the car\u2019s autopilot mode when the brake is not depressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One driver of a Tesla Model Y said they accidentally put the car in reverse in 2022 while waiting at a stoplight, narrowly avoiding a collision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When the light turned green, they \u201cinstinctively\u201d flicked the right-hand gear stalk upward to disengage autopilot so they could turn left, they told the DOT.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cUnfortunately, this \u2018conditioned\u2019 behavior of mine inadvertently put the car in reverse!! I pressed the accelerator and nearly backed into the car behind me,\u201d the complainant wrote to the agency. \u201cI am 99% certain that I did not have my foot on the brake pedal because I rarely use it nowadays,\u201d they wrote, noting that they rely on the car\u2019s autopilot mode to brake for them.\ufeff<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As for the system after 2021, it got even worse. It\u2019s a problem we reported on three years ago when the new needlessly confusing touch-screen shifting first debuted. It seemed like a major change in how humans interact with their cars that absolutely no one was asking for. Take a look for yourself:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not Great! While Tesla likes to push the envelop in car innovation, this change was a head scratcher (as was Musk\u2019s claim that the car would predict what gear shifts the driver wanted ahead of time). Musk also claimed that using stalks to indicate turning or chose a gear was \u201cannoying.\u201d Which… OK.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Reverse confusions in the cars were mere peanuts to other problems drivers had, mostly about phantom braking, which led to the death of at least one Tesla owner. And while the reversing problem is a huge safety bug that was intentionally programed into the system, other poor design choices by Tesla also contributed to Chao\u2019s death. The windows were unbreakable for both Chao\u2019s friends and the local fire department, and without power, it\u2019s not immediately obvious how to open the doors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This crash certainly puts the Cybertruck\u2019s \u201crock resistant\u201d windows into a whole new light. If the windows on an older model were impossible to break, even by first responders, then what kind of dangers lurk in America\u2019s favorite Apocalypse truck?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By Erin Marquis<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Feds have received at least 4,228 safety complaints related to Teslas Billionaire and sister to former U.S. secretary of transportation Elaine Chao, Angela Chao, drowned in her Tesla Model X after accidentally reversing into a pond on a 900-acre Texas ranch last month. She\u2019d reversed her Tesla Model X […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":6857,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[59],"class_list":["post-6856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adas","tag-tesla"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekedynamic.com\/th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekedynamic.com\/th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekedynamic.com\/th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekedynamic.com\/th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekedynamic.com\/th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6856"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tekedynamic.com\/th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6858,"href":"https:\/\/tekedynamic.com\/th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6856\/revisions\/6858"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekedynamic.com\/th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekedynamic.com\/th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekedynamic.com\/th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekedynamic.com\/th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}