What is the autopilot feature?
Autopilot is a driver assist feature available in all Tesla cars currently sold by the company. Thanks in part due to eight cameras and a total of 12 ultrasonic sensors, the car can safely and autonomously get you from A to B by itself.
This all relies on a central computer with a huge amount of processing power being able to make potentially life-dependent decisions in real-time. It combines both cruise control and a feature called ‘autosteer’. The cruise control will enable the car to look ahead and keep track on where cars are, meaning that it can maintain a safe distance behind the car and adjust speed where necessary to keep that safe distance maintained. The autosteer function as the name suggests allows Tesla to safely change lanes and enables the car to park itself.
Is it safe?
Despite many Tesla drivers being too heavily reliant on the autopilot technology, a concerning stat is that nearly 48% of Americans felt it would be safe to not have their hands on the wheel despite the safety feature is active. However, the autopilot feature in Tesla’s requires the driver to have their hands on the wheel and if they aren’t, they’ll subsequently receive warnings every half a minute to do so.
But as people do people have been finding ways around this and critics have said that the safety feature simply isn’t rigid enough and have drawn comparisons to Cadillac’s safety feature which require eye contact and if this isn’t picked up the car will safely park up at the side of the road. This would more than certainly prevent drivers falling asleep at the wheel, something quite a few Tesla drivers have been spotted doing. However, Tesla has come out in defence of their safety system advising that these pictures are simply ‘hoaxes’ and ‘pranks’.
Crashes
Another reason as to why critics are calling for Tesla to review the autopilot feature and to include more information in the instruction manual is that it has been involved in numerous fatal collisions. Just last year in 2018 on a Californian Motorway, the Tesla autopilot feature was alleged to have actively led towards a crash rather than this being an unfortunate turn of circumstances.
Fortunately, nobody was hurt in that crash but there have been fatal crashes involving a Tesla whereby the autopilot function was on, however, investigations are still ongoing to accurately establish responsibility for the crash and until then no firm conclusions can be drawn. It is only when these investigations have been completed that we can then draw up a proper judgement on whether Tesla should be looking into reviewing their autopilot feature.
