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Watch Tesla’s Autopilot autonomously avoid a collision with a truck [Video]

We’ve seen some close calls saved by the Model S’ active safety features powered by the Autopilot, like auto emergency braking preventing a 45mph head-on collision here, but today we take a look at a great example of Tesla’s auto emergency steering at work.

Tesla Model S owner Joshua Brown posted a dashcam video of his Model S narrowly avoiding a side collision when a boom-lift truck merged in the right lane without looking.

Brown described the incident:

“Tesla Model S autopilot saved the car autonomously from a side collision from a boom lift truck. I was driving down the interstate and you can see the boom lift truck in question on the left side of the screen on a joining interstate road. Once the roads merged, the truck tried to get to the exit ramp on the right and never saw my Tesla. I actually wasn’t watching that direction and Tessy (the name of my car) was on duty with autopilot engaged. I became aware of the danger when Tessy alerted me with the “immediately take over” warning chime and the car swerving to the right to avoid the side collision.

You can see where I took over when there’s a little bit of blip in the steering. Tessy had already moved to the right to avoid the collision. I was not able to slow down even more due to the heavy traffic (cars were behind me). Once I got behind him I slowly added more room between us until he exited. I was not tail gating after the incident.”

Here’s the video:

Tesla confirmed today that since introducing the Autopilot in October 2015, Tesla owners have driven over 47 million miles on the system:

[tweet https://twitter.com/TeslaMotors/status/718841495004971008 align=’center’]

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Comments

  1. Taylor Marks - 8 years ago

    Need to get that boom-lift truck set up with autopilot.

    How well does it handle automatic lane changes when you have a limited amount of time to change lanes (IE, because a split is coming up in the road?)

  2. Joe - 8 years ago

    Very cool. I just bought my new 90D with AP last week from Lyndhurst Tesla. Looks like this took place in Cleveland as well.

  3. Ferrous Patella - 8 years ago

    Was the horn blowing autonomous?

  4. Jason Chase - 8 years ago

    I wonder if he was recording during his accident.

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Avatar for Fred Lambert Fred Lambert

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