Skip to main content

Tesla Autopilot feature helps driver get safely to hospital

US driver Joshua Neally made it to safely to hospital by putting his Tesla Model X into Autopilot mode when he suffered what was later diagnosed as a pulmonary embolism. The lawyer was travelling home in growing rush-hour traffic when he began to suffer severe pain in his chest and stomach. Instead of calling an ambulance he used the car’s self-drive mode to negotiate the 20 miles to the nearest hospital. He told Slate that he manually steered it into the parking lot and checked himself into the emergenc
August 10, 2016 Read time: 1 min
US driver Joshua Neally made it to safely to hospital by putting his Tesla Model X into Autopilot mode when he suffered what was later diagnosed as a pulmonary embolism.

The lawyer was travelling home in growing rush-hour traffic when he began to suffer severe pain in his chest and stomach. Instead of calling an ambulance he used the car’s self-drive mode to negotiate the 20 miles to the nearest hospital. He told Slate that he manually steered it into the parking lot and checked himself into the emergency room, where he was promptly treated.

Tesla’s Autopilot is under scrutiny after the driver of a Tesla crashed into a truck in Florida while using the feature. The crash is still under investigation.

Related Content

  • CCTV brings transit safety into view
    September 15, 2014
    David Crawford looks at camera-based vulnerable road users protection systems.Safe and efficient operation of road-based transit depends on minimising the risks of incidents involving other vehicles or vulnerable road users such as pedestrians, cyclists and passengers boarding or alighting from buses or trams. The extent and quality of the visibility available to drivers is crucial in preventing and avoiding incidents. Conventionally, they have had to rely on fairly basic equipment - essentially the human
  • Activu and Mitsubishi give New Jersey controllers the big picture
    May 27, 2014
    Mitsubishi and Activu team up to help New Jersey emergency centre with real-time situational awareness. Sandy was the largest Atlantic hurricane in recorded history, with winds spanning an area of 1,100 miles and damages estimated at $68 billion. It killed at least 286 people in seven countries, from Jamaica to the Jersey Shore. But tropical storms are not the only challenge for emergency operations up and down the East Coast.
  • Futuristic EV infrastructure solution
    August 13, 2012
    A new transportation infrastructure that proposes to revolutionise the way electric vehicles (EVs) are used in the future has been unveiled. The TEV project uses a standardised pre-fabricated construction to greatly reduce local construction costs to deliver mass transport, across all types of terrain, anywhere in the world. It is being developed as an open-source venture, achievable now, using existing technologies. “With a specialised two-lane track, the size of a narrow country road, the capacity on the
  • Next generation safety technologies from Toyota
    October 14, 2013
    Toyota has revealed two new integrated safety systems designed to reduce the risk of pedestrian collisions and deliver safer driving in traffic, both of which will be brought to market in the next few years. Its auto-steering function for its pre-collision system (PCS) works in conjunction with automatic braking to help the driver avoid an impact, while its automated highway driving assist (AHDA) system keeps the car on an optimum driving line and a safe distance from the vehicle in front.