Tesla Q3 2020 Safety Report: Autopilot-Engaged Vehicles Still Safer

There’s no denying that Tesla makes some incredibly safe cars, even despite recent low marks for its Autopilot driver-assistance in a recent European Safety assessment.

Still, Tesla’s Q3 Vehicle Safety Report was released Monday morning, and it’s showing another impressive decrease in accidents, especially with Autopilot engaged, according to Tesla’s website.

In the report, Tesla says it had registered just one accident for every 4.59 million miles driven when drivers had Autopilot engaged in Q3. This number is down from Q2’s one accident for every 4.53 million miles.

Without the aid of Autopilot, Q3 accidents reported were only one for every 1.79 million miles driven, still improved significantly from Q2’s one for every 1.56 million miles driven.

The numbers show that Autopilot does play a major role in offering increased safety to drivers, even despite the skepticism of Tesla’s onlookers and competitors.

However, with Full Self-Driving on the cusp of being a public reality, critics will soon see Autopilot for what it is – a driver-assistance program, simply built to help engage the driver while also offering them added safety and pertinent information about their surroundings.

In any case, it’s nice to see Tesla getting closer to autonomous driving with its cars, and it shouldn’t be long before these technologies are considered standard.