The owner of the Tesla Model S claims that the autopilot of his electric car saved a pedestrian from death

Tesla received a letter from the owner of the electric car Model S, in which the motorist told about the effective operation of the autopilot (Tesla Autopilot) in an emergency. Thanks to the automatic emergency braking system (Automatic Emergency Braking), it was possible to avoid a pedestrian hit. If it were not for this system, there would be an accident in which a pedestrian could have perished.

This information came amid a series of investigations that are now being conducted by US regulators regarding Autopilot technology and the company itself.

Letter reads as follows:
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“ Hello. I would like to tell you that my car probably saved the life of a pedestrian last night, 16/07 around 10:30, when I was driving along Washington with my daughter. I was on New York Avenue, it was already dark, On the road there were a lot of cars with headlights turned on, somewhere a car signaled.… Suddenly in front of our Model S in the dark a pedestrian in dark clothes appeared, he was in the middle of the road.

Before I managed to hit the brakes, the emergency braking system gave a sound signal, and the display showed an image of a red car. The car braked on its own at a distance of just a few centimeters from the pedestrian. I would like to know if our car took a pedestrian for another car in front of us? I'm not sure that I could slow down in time, so I'm glad that the car did it herself. I am also not sure whether this event appeared in the sensor event log.

Now there are a lot of negative reviews about the Autopilot and the death of the driver a few weeks ago. I think it is important for you to learn about this story. The work you do is really important, it allows you to save lives. Unfortunately, cases like this are not covered by the press, so few people know how many accidents have been prevented. Thank you for giving Autopilot customers, albeit in beta.

Larry . "

As far as can be understood from the letter, in this case, it was the automatic emergency braking system that worked. While most of the additional functions of Autopilot are available only as premium services, Automatic Emergency Braking works on all Tesla electric vehicles without exception.

It is also difficult to say whether Larry has included all the additional services available in his Autopilot system (if there are any in his car). On roads with a large load and a large number of traffic lights, all these functions should not be activated.

After a series of autopilot crash stories in Tesla electric cars, Ilon Musk may well consider the option of collecting accident data prevented by Autopilot with driver names and confirmed by event logs. This information is really bypassed by a number of media publications. Usually, readers are more interested in emergency situations, catastrophes - but dangerous cases that ended without fatal consequences, unfortunately, are much less interested in people.

As for the troubles, Tesla has plenty of them now . In relation to the company, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) launched an investigation into the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. The regulator does not like the fact that after the accident with the death of the driver of the Tesla electric vehicle, the company and its manager sold the shares for $ 2 billion. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating. Regulatory officials want to determine the cause of the accident and make sure that the incidents with Tesla cars are not the result of mistakes made when developing a computer control system.

Earlier, Ilon Musk said that Tesla autopilot reduces the likelihood of a car in an accident at least twice. Thus, if most of the world’s cars were equipped with such a system, the number of deaths as a result of accidents would have decreased by several hundred thousand a year. At the same time, Tesla has not yet been collecting statistics on the prevention of accidents by its autopilot. According to Mask, the computer system of an electric vehicle quite often takes control of the machine. This helps to reduce the number of accidents, but the company has not yet requested similar data from its customers. The head of Tesla Motors says that he really does not want to ask about such situations, because the client may consider such a request as pressure, interference from his business.

It is known that by the beginning of 2016 the number of cases when the Tesla computer took control, reaches several thousand. How many accidents and deaths have been avoided is unknown. Perhaps, after Larry's letter, such positive stories will be covered more often by the press.