Fault of your friend for not keeping a safe distance.
If both drivers only had basic insurance covering damages that aren't your fault, he got nothing and the other driver got paid for having his car damaged by a reckless driver that smashed into his car.
How does your friend even know it was without reason? Maybe a kitten or a squirrel crossed the road.
We’re not debating fault, we’re debating whether other drivers drive predictably. Whether the driver brake checked him or whether there was a squirrel or kitten in the road doesn’t really matter: the point is the human driver braked unpredictably. You don’t have to drive with special caution around a Tesla, you should drive with the same amount of caution that you would drive around any car. I have a Tesla and I use autopilot pretty liberally (but not carelessly—I’m always ready to take over) and phantom braking was really frustrating last year, but it was never unsafe unless perhaps someone was literally a foot or two behind you at high speed. They seem to have fixed that sometime in 2022, and since then I’ve had fewer than 5 phantom braking episodes and they have been almost imperceptible (certainly not dangerous). The Tesla critics in this thread are reacting to some pretty extreme assumptions about autopilot (that phantom braking happens all the time, that it’s less safe than the unpredictable behavior of human drivers, etc). We certainly need more evidence, but I’m going to be biased toward the people who actually have experience driving Teslas rather than the people whose information comes from the rumor mill.
If both drivers only had basic insurance covering damages that aren't your fault, he got nothing and the other driver got paid for having his car damaged by a reckless driver that smashed into his car.
How does your friend even know it was without reason? Maybe a kitten or a squirrel crossed the road.