Advanced Driver Assistance Systems may be a difficult concept for some garages and bodyshops to take on board, but the technology is having a big impact saving lives on the roads. A good example of this is an incident in the English county of Dorset that involved a falling 400 hundred year old Oak tree. 

Driver Laurence Sanderson said he, his wife and three children, and the occupants of a second car coming in the opposite direction, were lucky to escape alive after a falling tree came down without warning in high winds. However, in an extraordinary coincidence, it turned out that both vehicles were Tesla Model X cars, equipped with autonomous emergency braking. Both cars came to an abrupt stop meaning only the bonnet sections were hit by the heavy tree and not the passenger compartments.

Mr Sanderson said, “We were driving along the A31 and I saw the tree coming down in the blink of an eye. The car slammed the brakes on and the trunk landed on our bonnet. Another second and we would undoubtedly be dead.” He added, “The other car had four people in it and they were all ok. The odds of both cars being Teslas is extraordinary.”

Sensors on the Tesla cars had detected the falling tree before either driver could react and activated the emergency braking system. The incident is a good, if somewhat extreme, example of why car manufacturers are placing increasing emphasis on ADAS systems.