Watch Tesla Autopilot swerve at last second to avoid a deer

We are starting to see an increasing number of reports from Tesla owners about Autopilot doing some really aggressive maneuvers to avoid crashes.

In this new example, a Tesla owner shares a video of Autopilot swerving to avoid a deer at the last second.

During the early days of Autopilot, Tesla was limiting the system from making drastic evasion maneuvers in order to avoid causing accidents.

Instead, it would only apply brakes or steer away if it wasn’t 100% certain a collision was inevitable. It could still reduce the impact by slowing the car.

However, we have recently noticed an increase in the number of reports from Tesla owners showing 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.

More recently, we reported on Tesla Autopilot avoiding running over a pig in the middle of the road.

Now Tesla owner Russ Lepage from Saskatchewan, Canada, shares an impressive video of Autopilot doing something similar by avoiding a deer on the road:

Thanks @elonmusk and the @Tesla team. #Autopilot just saved me from having a very bad day! #TeslasAreAwesome #AutopilotForTheWin@TeslaOwnersSK pic.twitter.com/jHjZbjl4Cr

— Russ Lepage (@russlepage) June 18, 2020

The TeslaCam video shows a Model 3 making a very quick maneuver to avoid the deer, and Lepage claims that the Autopilot did it automatically.

We have seen Autopilot detecting deers before:

Autopilot visualizes the deer as a human crossing the road : https://t.co/rSEnNUr6CJ

— TESLA saves lives (@Teslasaveslives) June 17, 2020

While it doesn’t represent it as a deer in the driving visualization, you can see that Autopilot detected an object represented as a pedestrian.

Electrek’s Take

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.

Share this with our friends who only hear about Autopilot causing crashes.

As usual, keep in mind that even though Tesla’s Autopilot is showing impressive performance, you should still pay attention at all times and be ready to take control with your hands on the wheel.