Two new Tesla safety features added

Tesla is rolling out two new safety features globally – lane departure avoidance and emergency lane departure avoidance.

These features apply some of the best parts of Autopilot to help all customers stay engaged and in their lane to avoid collisions when Autopilot is not in use, the company says.

Autopilot is designed to reduce fatigue by helping drivers stay in their lane, while also ensuring that they keep their hands on the wheel.

“While lane-keeping and hands-on monitoring can be extremely effective at helping to reduce the likelihood of an accident when Autopilot is in use, we believe that these precautions can also be extremely effective for preventing accidents when Autopilot is not in use,” Tesla says.

Its quarterly safety reports show drivers using Autopilot register fewer accidents per kilometre than those driving without it.

Inadvertently leaving a lane is a common accident cause when Autopilot is not in use, Tesla adds.

Lane departure avoidance lets a driver elect to have corrective steering applied to keep them in their intended lane. When the feature is in use and a driver is departing a lane without their turn signal on, the car will also check to see whether a driver’s hands are on the wheel. If not, the driver will receive a series of hands-on reminders and alerts.

This feature can be turned on or off, and works between 40km/h and 144km/h.

It is an extension of lane departure warning, which already warns drivers through a steering wheel vibration if they begin to drift out of their lane without their turn signal engaged.

Emergency lane departure avoidance is designed to steer a Tesla back into the driving lane if Tesla’s system detects it is departing its lane and there could be a collision, or if the car is close to the road edge. This feature will automatically be enabled at the beginning of every drive, but can be turned off for a single drive by going to the Autopilot Controls menu.

A free over-the-air software update starts with Model 3 owners and expands to all Tesla cars built after October 2016.

Check blog post for more information.