NHTSA complaint #11458955

Owner complaint summary

I was driving between 25-30 mph at dusk. Suddenly a loud red warning appeared on the dashboard, and the car came to a screeching halt. I did not touch the brakes - it happened all on its own. There was nothing in front of me, such as a collision. It was not raining. The only factor that changed, which might be completely coincidental, is that I was just going over top of a large metal plate on the street that is used to cover road construction. The plate was just like any other, and stuck up maybe an inch. By the brakes slamming on, I was hit by the car behind me, who was also going 25-30 mph. This caused my passenger to be thrashed around - luckily neither of us were hurt. The driver of the other vehicle was not hurt but his car's hood was badly damaged. He had two kids in the back seat. I see this article, but when discussing it with the dealer, they claimed to have no knowledge of the issue or recall, even though it says the issue has been happening since 2020. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/19/vw-recalls-246000-atlas-suvs-due-to-issue-with-airbags-brakes.html If this had occurred when a car was not just right behind me, but maybe 20 car lengths back, they would have plowed into me going 30 mph. This could have been extremely bad, and someone could die from such a situation. This is not the first time the loud warning light has come on for no reason. Every so often it will come on, even though there is nothing close to the vehicle. However, it is the first time it has braked like this. I have also found the software to be very glitchy at other times. Suddenly the radio might turn off, the navigation system goes very wrong, and so forth. When mentioning this to the dealer, they blamed Apple due to CarPlay. When I explained that these have nothing to do with CarPlay, they had no response. A software update did just occur maybe a week or two ago. I don't know if this is related to the brake issue.