In an incident caught on video, a Tesla Model 3 on Autopilot drove on some ice and slid out-of-control, but the owner claims that the driver assist system regained control of the vehicle by itself and brought it back into a lane.

Driver assist systems to prevent a vehicle from going out of control is nothing new.

Vehicles have traction and stability control for years, but a Model 3 owner in Quebec claims that Tesla’s Autopilot did a lot more than that.

Eric Laperriere was driving his Model 3 on the highway outside of Montreal last week when he drove over some black ice and the vehicle veered out-of-control two lanes to the right.

The Model 3 driver claims that the Autopilot system, aided by the traction control and AWD, managed to automatically regain control and bring the vehicle back into the center lane.

The near-miss incident was caught on a dashcam and Laperriere shared the video with us:

Laperriere claims that he didn’t touch the steering wheel throughout the entire event caught on video:

“I didn’t touch the wheel once. Everything was done through Autopilot and the AWD system. […] The steering wheel was moving so fast that I preferred to let the car handle it.”

We have recently seen several other videos of Autopilot helping prevent accidents – especially since Tesla released its own dashcam app.

Last summer, a Tesla Model 3 owner claimed ‘Autopilot saved his life’ by swerving away in near-miss caught on video.

We have also seen Autopilot moving away from a semi truck to avoid a near-miss crash.

Electrek’s Take

If Autopilot really managed to regain control and bring the Model 3 back in the center lane, that’s quite impressive.

I’ve seen some good stability control systems before, but that’s a whole new level and probably as good as with any human could have done in a best case scenario.

That said, I’m not sure I would have been able to stop myself from trying to regain control with the steering wheel in this situation, which would have negated the Autosteer’s part in making this happen as described by Laperriere.

There was a lot of rain last week in Quebec and it froze a few times. The driving conditions were really bad and I’ve seen several people losing control on ice and black ice.

The truth is that most human drivers have a lot of difficulties regaining control in those situations.

I am not really surprised that an automated system can surpass us in that aspect of driving, but as usual when we are talking about Autopilot, drivers should always stay vigilant and hold the steering wheel when using the driver assist system.

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