Watch Tesla Autopilot avoid running over a pig in the middle of the road

A Tesla owner shared a video of his car on Autopilot avoiding running over a pig in the middle of the road, and Elon Musk commented on the video.

Over the years, videos of Tesla vehicles on Autopilot being involved in crashes have gone viral and have been reposted by media around the world.

On the other hand, it’s much more frequent that Autopilot and the collision avoidance systems that it powers help avoid accidents, but these events don’t get reported nearly as much.

Tesla owner Pranay Pathole shared a very interesting video of such an instance.

It shows his Tesla avoiding what appears to be a wild pig in the middle of the road.

Pathole says that his vehicle was on Autopilot when avoiding the crash:

https://twitter.com/PPathole/status/1269692296330653697

As you can see, the pig is barely visible in the front-facing camera view, but it appears that the vehicle avoids hitting it head on, and but it still hits on the side of the vehicle.

For a long time, it has been believed that Autopilot wasn’t able to do such a drastic evasion maneuver due to built-in limitations to avoid causing an accident.

However, there has recently been an increased number of Tesla owners reporting Autopilot, or more specifically active safety features powered by Autopilot, avoiding crashes by doing some impressively aggressive evasive maneuvers.

A Tesla Model 3 owner claimed “Autopilot saved his life” by swerving away in a near-miss on the highway, and another similar incident was also caught on video just last year.

Furthermore, Tesla CEO Elon Musk commented on Pathole’s video, indicating that he agrees Autopilot could have been in play in this incident:

Autopilot prime directive is: Don’t crash. What seems fast to humans is slow to a computer. 360 degree low light vision and sonar, plus forward radar enable to be superhuman. Upcoming software upgrades will increasingly show the potential.

The CEO says that more upcoming updates are going to improve on the current collision avoidance system.

Tesla already claims that it is much safer to drive with Autopilot than without:

However, the data is skewed by the fact that people mainly use Autopilot on the highway, where it is easier to accumulate more mileage without accident, but Autopilot’s safety features are always active.