FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE: ADAPTIVE CRUISE CONTROL
Speed
25 mph
Severity
Deaths
0
Injured
1
Fire
No
Crash
Yes
Police report
No
Medical attention
Yes
Vehicle towed
Yes
Narrative
Tesla Motors has two self-driving features, a mode they call enhanced autopilot and Full Self-Driving. Enhanced Autopilot is used primarily on freeways, and allows the car to switch lanes without driver's assistance, while maintaining the speed of traffic. Full Self Driving is a separate system in and of itself that relies on far more sensors, and is far more complex, as it needs to be in order to handle all the nuances of allowing a car to drive itself on and around city streets. During the month of April ,Tesla previewed the supposed improvements in its full self driving mode by releasing it to everyone for free for that month. I was exiting the [XXX] freeway in Los Angeles, utilizing the enhanced autopilot feature to navigate myself to my destination. At this exit, the car makes a right on [XXX], drives down about 500 feet and then makes another right so that you're briefly traveling underneath the freeway from you'd just exited. As the car made that second right, while on what should have full self-driving mode, the car failed to navigate the angle of that turn and ran right into a steep curb at a fairly fast speed, destroying the right drive train, the right tire, the entire front bumper, and the cars wheel chassis and suspension system all still have to be fixed. I believe the malfunction was caused by the car failing to properly switch between enhanced autopilot and full self-driving if they utilize GPS to make that determination, because it felt almost as if the ca