Verified government source

NHTSA complaint #11464982

This page summarizes an official U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration owner complaint. Use the verification links below to confirm the record directly with NHTSA.

Vehicle

2020 TESLA MODEL 3

Manufacturer

Tesla, Inc.

Components

UNKNOWN OR OTHER,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE

Dates

Incident: 05/13/2022
Filed: 05/17/2022

Owner complaint summary

We were pulling our car from 5th floor of a parking garage and as the car was coming down the ramp into the 4th floor, it accelerated itself to a high speed, hit another parked car, and came to a stop hitting concrete pillar in the garage. Our car was damaged severely and all the airbags got deployed, smoke came out it. We are still in shock from the incident and it was a traumatic experience for all 4 members of our family including two of our children. It would have been catastrophic had there been another person around or if something more had happened. Our car unexpectedly accelerated and none of the warnings worked. Tesla car usually gives us warning (a shrilling beeping noise) when an unexpected obstacle, be it another car or a trash can or a human, is within a short distance of the vehicle. This warning sound comes up even when no automatic driving feature is used. But on that day, the warning sound did not come and we think the vehicle may have malfunctioned. When we searched in the internet, we found many incidents of unexpected acceleration with Tesla Model 3.When we brought our concern to the insurance, we were asked to report to NHTSA. The car is now with insurance and the manufacturer has not looked into it as we haven’t informed them yet. The car was in excellent condition and there were no warning or failure lamps on before the incident. This warrants your attention and hence we are writing this to you. Please advise us the next steps and if we need to preserve the car to retrieve any data recorded in the vehicle. For the safety of other drivers and pedestrians, this needs to be thoroughly investigated. Kindly do the needful.

Crash reported
This is an owner complaint filed with NHTSA (ODI #11464982). It is not automatically an official recall, investigation outcome, or manufacturer admission unless the complaint text itself describes one.

Official record ID (ODI): 11464982. This page is the human-readable source link used across afterwarranty. The raw JSON link proxies NHTSA's public API for machine verification; prefer this page when reading the complaint.