Incredible dashcam footage out of the Netherlands shows Tesla’s Autopilot feature quickly predicting and responding to a violent crash that occurred just meters ahead it.
Original video, authorisation from the owner. Essential, no one could predict the accident but the radar did and acted by emergency braking. pic.twitter.com/70MySRiHGR
— Hans Noordsij (@HansNoordsij) December 27, 2016
In the video posted on Twitter by Hans Noordsij, beeping from the Tesla can be heard warning its driver of a potential crash. The semi-autonomous vehicle used its radar and sensors to detect a vehicle braking on the highway up ahead, it then determined the potential for an accident and automatically applied its own brakes. This prevented the electric car from becoming a third player in a heavy crash that all parties, fortunately, walked away from uninjured, according to Noordsij.
The Twitter user claims it was the Autopilot that initially applied the emergency brake before the driver was able to react and brake herself.
Tesla released version 8.0 of its Autopilot system this summer. It was touted by CEO Elon Musk as providing lifesaving potential, a statement no doubt proven by this video. An official statement given by the company earlier this year states its main goal for the version 8.0 release:
While there are dozens of small refinements with Version 8 of our software, described in addendum below, the most significant upgrade to Autopilot will be the use of more advanced signal processing to create a picture of the world using the onboard radar. The radar was added to all Tesla vehicles in October 2014 as part of the Autopilot hardware suite, but was only meant to be a supplementary sensor to the primary camera and image processing system.
Of course, not all cars are autonomous, and the Tesla in this video was fortunate not to get rear-ended by another car driven by a human. Still, this video provides a bit of reassurance for the future of the automobile industry after a terrifying start.
H/T Gizmodo