Dashcam video of avoided accident - would autopilot have avoided this?

[ElectricRider]

This happened to me yesterday:

(fast forward 40 seconds)

Autopilot was off at the time and I instinctively swerved to avoid the accident. Wondering if autopilot would have avoided a crash if enabled and I had not reacted? I think it would have slowed but not swerved, and Model 3 would be in the shop. What do you think? What future features would need to be added to avoid an accident like this in self driving mode? Of course if the car that crashed had autopilot...

 

[Tam]

...swerved to avoid the accident...

It's a difficult scenario for Autopilot: a car suddenly moves to your lane in front.

I don't think earlier versions could brake in time but I think the current version can brake in time but I don't count on it every time.

I don't expect FSD will be able to perform a complex maneuver of swerving out of the current lane for this scenario any time soon. Most likely, future FSD with no drivers would just do a simple maneuver of stopping rather than swerving into another lane.

 

[Chisale]

I agree with Tam. It probably would have just attempted a full stop in the lane you were in and not attempted to change lanes so quickly. Now whether that would have avoided the accident it's difficult to know. Teslas can stop pretty damn fast but then that brings into question whether you may have been rear ended even if you had avoided a front collision. Thanks for sharing. Great driving instructional tool to show people the danger of driving so fast in the right lane.

 

[ElectricRider]

That’s my conclusion too. I swear the accident seemed much more severe at the time than it appears in the video. I remember the sound of the crash and having no time to stop. Traffic was moving at 65 mph. What I’m really wondering is if the sensors could have predicted the accident before it happened given how reckless the driver was, and applied the brakes for an extra half second.

 

[Jae001]

We are years away from FSD avoiding a crash like that. An emergency lane change is not the way Tesla would want to handle that situation as it may cause another accident moving so quickly into another lane. Full stop is the safest way to handle that and if you get rear ended it wouldn't be your fault. If the car would swerve into another lane and hit another car you would be at fault (most likely).

 

[ElectricRider]

Jae, you’re absolutely right about the risk I took with the swerve. I definitely could not have stopped in lane without an accident, even if the car could have done so itself. If you watch the back camera you see how lucky I was that another car wasn’t in one of those two lanes. Cars were passing in those lanes right before the accident, and it’s only chance I had the room I did to maneuver.

 

[Tam]

There are quite a few articles claiming that Autopilot swerved into an empty lane to save a family of ducks crossing the street.

However, when I read the youtube note, it might not be the Autopilot that did all that!

"Autopilot recognized, sounded the alarm and started to swerve/brake, then disengaged."

It sounds more like after the alarm was issued, the Autopilot handed over to the driver in a split of seconds and the act of moving to the empty lane would most likely be the manual steering after the system disengaged itself.

I think current Autopilot can swerve but only within its own lane and it does not move out of its own lane to avoid obstacles.

 

[Tam]

...if the sensors could have predicted the accident before it happened given how reckless the driver was, and applied the brakes for an extra half second.

There have been a few video showing that the radar alarmed / applied brakes because it could sense not only the car in front but also the car further in front that is blocked from driver's view:

 

[BlueBlazes]

There are quite a few articles claiming that Autopilot swerved into an empty lane to save a family of ducks crossing the street.

However, when I read the youtube note, it might not be the Autopilot that did all that!

"Autopilot recognized, sounded the alarm and started to swerve/brake, then disengaged."

It sounds more like after the alarm was issued, the Autopilot handed over to the driver in a split of seconds and the act of moving to the empty lane would most likely be the manual steering after the system disengaged itself.

I think current Autopilot can swerve but only within its own lane and it does not move out of its own lane to avoid obstacles.

Our car swerved into the next lane on its own when we were in Autopilot. A big SUV in the lane to the right turned into us and my wife started to turn away and realized Autopilot was already taking it into the next lane. I was surprised it would do that but it definitely avoided a collision and apparently recognized that the left lane was clear.

 

[SlimJim]

that jetta driver ..... dumb as a rock not paying attention to the road.

 

[qdeathstar]

that radar as alerted me a few times.... need to pay better attention to the road i guess.

 

[Robotpedlr]

Awesome that you were paying attention and were able to safely avoid being part of the mess.

 

[Chisale]

You know, now that I think about it more there was an incident while I was driving where Autopilot swerved to avoid what it thought was going to be an accident. I was on a 4 lane divided highway in the right lane with NoA engaged. Then a pickup truck was merging onto the highway about the same time as me. I didn't bother to get over as I had him beat clearly and most reasonable drivers would have just merged in behind me and then passed on the left if necessary. But this jerk decided to gun it, pass me on the right just as the entrance lane was ending and cut me off. So now there's suddenly a car in Autopilot's vision just a few feet in front of me that appeared out of nowhere. The car braked hard, swerved partially into the left lane, the red steering wheel popped up and Autopilot shutoff down alarms all went off. All at the same time. Scared the hell out of my wife in the passenger seat who was looking at her phone and didn't see what happened. From now on I just force the car to get over when that happens as it's definitely a weakness of Autopilot in that they don't "see" cars merging until fairly late.

So totally different situation from yours but it is possible it might have swerved to the left but certainly not as quickly and reliably as you did.