I had an unfortunate circumstance happen to me a few months ago in my '16 Model S. While driving to work early one morning on an access road that was merging on the interstate, I had an epileptic seizure (first one in my life) without warning that rendered me unconscious. At that point, according to a witness in a car behind me, the car veered to the right glancing off a barrier then headed left to merge onto the highway. It crossed 4 lanes of traffic (missing a semi) before slamming into the median on the left. The car was totaled (see pics) but fortunately no one else was involved in the accident. When I regained consciousness a few minutes later I discovered that the driver, left side, and window curtain airbags were deployed. I was able to climb over the center console and exit the right passenger door with the help of EMS. Minor broken bones aside, I must say I am appreciative of the passive safety features of the car as it clearly saved my life by sacrificing it's own. Now some may say if autopilot was activated it would have prevented this from happening. However I typically don't engage AP until I am on the highway.
In looking for a car replacement, I searched all the luxury car competitors to see if they offered safety technology that allows always-on monitoring with emergency features that sense when a driver is incapacitated and safely pull the car over and call emergency response crews. The closest thing I found wasn't even in the States - it was the Volkswagen Arteon and in Europe has a feature called Emergency Assist 2.0 (see link: How VW's Arteon keeps you alive if you pass out while driving). I was contemplating waiting to see if it comes to the US, but due to regulatory hurdles with levels 3,4,5 autonomy here I figured it wasn't happening any time soon. I therefore abandoned that idea and put all my chips in the Tesla corner again - this time with the Model 3. Of course I can't drive it yet (not for 6 months of being seizure free according to my doctor) but I will not stop hoping that sometime soon Elon will have the company push out an update that gives Teslas this enhanced safety feature. And why not? Our current autopilot technology can already do this if engaged and senses no driver response after a certain time. How hard would it be to have a passive "Autopilot" that can do the same thing? It would have saved me the loss of a wonderful car (and a 100K hospital bill)!
p.s. I would request that the car pull over to the slow lane before stopping. It seems equally risky the way the current Autopilot stops in whatever lane it's on - (just ripe for getting rear ended by some high speed driver who's texting while on the passing lane.)
Thank you
In looking for a car replacement, I searched all the luxury car competitors to see if they offered safety technology that allows always-on monitoring with emergency features that sense when a driver is incapacitated and safely pull the car over and call emergency response crews. The closest thing I found wasn't even in the States - it was the Volkswagen Arteon and in Europe has a feature called Emergency Assist 2.0 (see link: How VW's Arteon keeps you alive if you pass out while driving). I was contemplating waiting to see if it comes to the US, but due to regulatory hurdles with levels 3,4,5 autonomy here I figured it wasn't happening any time soon. I therefore abandoned that idea and put all my chips in the Tesla corner again - this time with the Model 3. Of course I can't drive it yet (not for 6 months of being seizure free according to my doctor) but I will not stop hoping that sometime soon Elon will have the company push out an update that gives Teslas this enhanced safety feature. And why not? Our current autopilot technology can already do this if engaged and senses no driver response after a certain time. How hard would it be to have a passive "Autopilot" that can do the same thing? It would have saved me the loss of a wonderful car (and a 100K hospital bill)!
p.s. I would request that the car pull over to the slow lane before stopping. It seems equally risky the way the current Autopilot stops in whatever lane it's on - (just ripe for getting rear ended by some high speed driver who's texting while on the passing lane.)
Thank you