Skip to main content

Video of Tesla Model S collision shows the Autopilot helping prevent an impact [Video]

Tesla’s Autopilot program has been getting bad press lately following a few accidents involving some features of the system, but there’s been virtually no attention to events where the Autopilot prevented or helped prevent accidents, or reduced the severity of an unavoidable impact.

Those instances can be described as non-events and therefore, they don’t get as much attention as the crashes, especially if they come with pictures of the aftermath which plays to our collective curiosity, but that doesn’t mean that those events are less important or any less impressive.

We covered before the Autopilot’s Auto Emergency Braking (AEB) preventing a head-on collision in October of last year in Seattle, and more recently, the AEB was engaged just in time to stop from running into a pedestrian late at night in Washington D.C.

Now we report on the Forward-Collision Avoidance system, which is also powered by Tesla’s Autopilot, preventing an initial impact in a traffic accident in a Model S on the highway in Atlanta.

Bobby Blackwolf of the VOG, a network of internet radio stations dedicated to ‘geek culture’, released the dashcam footage of an accident in his Tesla Model S back in May in Atlanta.

The footage shows Blackwolf driving in his Model S on Autopilot in the left lane when the vehicles in front of him started “slamming on their brakes” and the Forward-Collision Avoidance system quickly alerted of a possible impact. Blackwolf applied the brake when he heard the alarm since he said that the system detected the car in front of him slowing down before he could notice it himself.

He insists that he would have hit the car in front him if it wasn’t for the Autopilot. He states that what happened next is the proof that he would have hit the car:

Blackwolf has a point since in term of responsibility, in the case of a rear-end collision, the person coming from the rear is almost always responsible for the accident. The fact that the system helped prevent his Model S from hitting the car in front of him shows that he did his part, as long as the braking wasn’t premature, which it looks like it wasn’t the case here.

He referenced Consumer Reports’ recent call for Tesla to disable the Autopilot:

“When I hear Consumer Reports say that “for the good of consumers Tesla needs to turn off their Autopilot system”, what I actually hear is that they feel like [this accident] should have been a three-car pileup rather than the slight fender bender that it actually was.”

To be fair though, Consumer Reports asked Tesla to disable the Autosteer feature of the Autopilot, not the Collision Warning feature, but in the case of Blackwolf’s accident, the Autosteer was also activated.

Tesla insists that its cars are actually safer with the Autopilot system than without. The company referred to the fact that there’s currently one known fatality in just over 130 million miles driven while Autopilot was activated compared to about a fatality for approximately every 60 million miles globally and one in every 94 million miles in the US.

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.

Stay up to date with the latest content by subscribing to Electrek on Google News. You’re reading Electrek— experts who break news about Tesla, electric vehicles, and green energy, day after day. Be sure to check out our homepage for all the latest news, and follow Electrek on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay in the loop. Don’t know where to start? Check out our YouTube channel for the latest reviews.

Comments

Author

Avatar for Fred Lambert Fred Lambert

Fred is the Editor in Chief and Main Writer at Electrek.

You can send tips on Twitter (DMs open) or via email: fred@9to5mac.com

Through Zalkon.com, you can check out Fred’s portfolio and get monthly green stock investment ideas.


Manage push notifications

notification icon
We would like to show you notifications for the latest news and updates.
notification icon
You are subscribed to notifications
notification icon
We would like to show you notifications for the latest news and updates.
notification icon
You are subscribed to notifications