Shortly after announcing part two of his company’s master plan, Tesla CEO Elon Musk shared a tweet about how Autopilot may have saved a life in Washington DC.
Larry, the author of the following e-mail, wrote Musk in order to let him know what had happened, which in hindsight is basically the system doing what it was designed to do.
In fact, as great as it is that somebody wasn’t seriously hurt or worse, what went down last week (the e-mail is dated 7/16 10:30pm) could have probably been prevented by any car with any type of pedestrian detection technology.
Either way, here’s a partial transcript of the e-mail:
“I just wanted to let you know that I think my car probably saved the life of a pedestrian last night, 7/16 around 10:30pm when I was driving in Washington DC with my daughter. I was on New York Ave and it was night time, there was a lot of glare from the headlights of oncoming cars, and there was a siren in the distance. We were having trouble figuring out if the siren was coming from behind us or from one of the side roads when a pedestrian stepped out in front of our Model S in the dark with dark clothes and in the middle of the road (not near an intersection). Before I could step on the break the car beeped and the picture of a red car came up on my dash. The car slammed on the breaks before I could and we stopped just inches from hitting the pedestrian.
I guess that the car thought the pedestrian was another car in front of us? I am not sure if I would have been able to stop before hitting him but I am so glad that the car did. I am not sure if the event is recorded in the cars sensor logs.”
Larry even goes on to address all the negativity surrounding Tesla’s Autopilot system, but with regards to what happened, that was basically it – a system that’s supposed to protect people, did just that.
