If you’ve kept an ear to the ground these past few weeks you’ll know that pre-orders for the new Tesla, one of Elon Musk’s companies, are nearing the 400 000 mark.

Pretty impressive stuff right, and now footage has emerged that shows Joshua Brown’s Tesla S operating in Autopilot mode and avoiding a crash.

Now if you watch that video above you’re probably not all that impressed, neither am I, but the folks at Wired believe we should be amped:

…the awesome news, in the “awe-inspiring” sense of the word, is not that the car saved someone from danger. It’s that the car worked exactly it should have. And even better, the technology that let it spot an oncoming accident and leap to safety is about get a lot more common.

Tesla’s Autopilot feature has been available to the driving public for six months. It uses radar, mounted cameras, and ultrasonic sensors to read road markings and obstacles near and far, keeping the car in its lane and away from bumping other vehicles.

It only works in simple scenarios like highway cruising (it doesn’t recognize traffic signals), but requires the human to handle more complex driving situations.

Perfect for the Sunday ride home from a festival when you hit those long straights and the brain is not at full throttle.

[source:wired]