Tesla Creates Safety Feature that Tensions Seat Belts When Vision System Senses Imminent Collision

Photo: Tesla

Tesla created a feature that tensions seat belts if the vision system detects an imminent collision. Now the manufacturer's vehicles will protect their passengers even better from collisions, which no other automaker can offer.

In early July, Tesla rolled out a new software update, 2022.20, which included an amazing feature that dealt with seat belts. Now the manufacturer's vehicles that have AP3 hardware will be even better at protecting their passengers from collisions by using a seatbelt pretensioner during frontal collisions. If the seat belt is fastened correctly, it will begin to tighten to protect passengers during a collision. In the release notes the feature was described as follows:

“This enhancement builds upon your vehicle's superior crash protection - based upon regulatory and industry standard crash testing, but using Tesla Vision to help offer some of the most cutting-edge seatbelt pretensioner performance in the event of a frontal crash. Your seatbelt will now begin to tighten and protect properly restrained occupants earlier in a wider array of frontal crashes.”

During the Q2 2022 Earnings Call, Tesla CEO Elon Musk also highlighted this feature, giving more details. He explained that this pre-tensioning of the seat belt, which occurs before an imminent collision, is a unique feature made possible by Tesla Vision and the painstaking work of its safety team. Every other manufacturer uses such mechanisms in cars that only tension the seat belt in the event of a collision. That is, in fact, the occupants receive a significant physical impact before the seat belt is tightened. Tesla cars, thanks to Tesla Vision, tighten the seat belt before a collision occurs, providing the best possible protection.

“Our safety team also introduced a feature that tension seat belts, if the vision system detects imminent collision, which has never been done before. So, you can imagine that if you have a seatbelt that only tensions upon impact you have very little time to tension the seatbelt. If you have got to be – the car has got to be crunching to trigger the seatbelt tensioner, but because we have Vision, we can actually see that a collision is about to occur with 100% probability before it actually happens. And so we can tension the seatbelts and we can even adjust the airbag deployment, because we can see, not just feel. This is a fundamental safety advantage that Teslas are now able to offer. And there is also an over-the-air update, so this is something that will be in place in all cars that have at least AP3 hardware.”

© 2022, Eva Fox | Tesmanian. All rights reserved.

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