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Tesla adds lane keeping functionality to supplement Autopilot

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Tesla has announced that it is introducing two new safety features designed to help prevent drivers from inadvertently departing their lane, which the company says its data shows is a common cause of accidents when Autopilot feature is not engaged.

The new features, Lane Departure Avoidance and Emergency Lane Departure Avoidance, help drivers stay engaged and in their lane in order to avoid collisions.

Lane Departure Avoidance lets a driver elect to have corrective steering applied in order to keep them in their intended lane. When the feature is in use and a driver is departing a lane without their turn signal on, the car will also check to see whether a driver’s hands are on the wheel. If a driver’s hands are not detected on the wheel, the driver will receive a series of hands-on reminders and alerts, similar to the ones that the cars provide to customers who use Autopilot. If a driver’s hands are repeatedly not detected on the wheel when Traffic Aware Cruise Control is in use, their car will gradually slow down to 15 mph below the speed limit or below the car’s set speed and turn its hazard lights on.

This feature can be turned on or off, and works at speeds between 25 and 90 mph. It is an extension of Lane Departure Warning, which already warns drivers through a steering wheel vibration if they begin to drift out of their lane without their turn signal engaged.

Emergency Lane Departure Avoidance is designed to steer a Tesla vehicle back into the driving lane if the system detects that it is departing its lane and there could be a collision, or if the car is close to the edge of the road. This feature will automatically be enabled at the beginning of every drive but can be turned off for a single drive by going to the Autopilot Controls menu.

The new features will be available via a free over-the-air software update, starting with Model 3 owners and gradually expanding to all cars that were built after October 2016.

This article courtesy of Russell Thrall III, publisher CollisionWeek. Check out their website at: www.collisionweek.com.

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