In a remarkable incident on the South Eastern Freeway in Adelaide, Australia, a 67-year-old man credits Tesla’s Autopilot system for potentially saving his life and those of other motorists.
The driver, who prefers to remain anonymous, experienced a medical episode while driving his Tesla Model 3 RWD, leading to a near-catastrophic situation that was narrowly averted.
Terrifying dashcam footage from the incident, which occurred last year on June 18, shows the Tesla veering across multiple lanes and medians, miraculously avoiding collisions with oncoming traffic and bouncing off a cable fence.
The driver recounted the harrowing experience only now to Adelaide Now, saying, “I felt a tingling in my head and woke up in an ambulance,” he said. He later saw footage of the event at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, where a doctor showed him his car’s dashcam video, saying, “this is you mate!”
The driver believes Tesla’s Autopilot played a critical role in preventing a crash. “My interpretation of the events from the video is that as I was drifting across the lanes, the warnings from the car would have been coming,” he explained. He surmised that the car sensed danger and attempted to navigate to safety, despite the chaos.
The dashcam footage indicates the Tesla’s acceleration helped it dodge oncoming traffic. The driver expressed his uncertainty about the extent of the car’s autonomous intervention but noted, “the luck we all had was a bit too convenient.” He added, “The Tesla is capable of intervening, for better or for worse, and it seems that it had a say in the outcome.”
Expressing his gratitude, the man also acknowledged the distress caused to other motorists and thanked the emergency services for their prompt response. “I can only feel sympathy for the unfortunate people scared witless by a crazy car coming towards them,” he said.
It’s unclear if this Tesla had Full Self-Driving enabled to allow the car to steer away from danger, but with regular Autopilot, if a driver does not respond to audible warnings to keep hands on the wheel, the car will come to a complete stop and turn on hazard lights. The video below seems to show the car may have had its accelerator pressed based on the speed it was going. We’ll never really know, but Tesla likely has data on this vehicle’s crash.
You can see the crazy dash cam video of the Tesla Model 3 below, captured by a car that narrowly got hit:
