We’ve known that self driving cars have been getting smarter for a while now. And while they haven’t become mainstream yet, they can still blow your minds every once in a while.
Hans Noordsij’s Tesla had a dashboard camera and he driving along the Dutch freeway. As he looked on, a hatchback in front of him tried to overtake a black SUV from the right, but didn’t swerve far enough – it ended up smashing into the SUV, sending it toppling over.
But apart from the horrifying footage, his dashcam captured something incredible – seconds before the actual accident took place, Tesla’s Forward Collision Warning alert sounded. It sent out warning beeps before the cars had even made contact. And that wasn’t all – Noordisj says that the Tesla had started braking by itself before he could even react.
If you listen closely, you can hear the beeps sounding before the car has even hit the SUV in front of it.
Now this is pretty special – not only was Tesla able to predict the path of the two cars and determine that an accident was going to take place, it also managed to take action before the human driver could react – it went ahead an automatically applied the brakes on its car.
This, obviously, is huge for road safety – if cars are able to predict the movements of cars around them, and foreshadow collisions, this will add precious seconds to braking times, and potentially save thousands of lives. Tesla is best known for creating electric vehicles, but now it’s showing that its self driving capabilities can compete with the biggest names in the business.