The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) tested Tesla Autopilot safeguards and found that drivers are pretty quick to adapt to the windows of opportunity the suite gives after warning them to pay attention.
The IIHS study sought to determine whether partially automated driving systems and their safeguards increase driver attentiveness. With the rollout of more advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and semi-autonomous driving functionalities, the goal is to increase safety.
However, these suites still require the driver to pay attention and be aware of any potential opportunity to take over if needed. These driving systems and features are designed to increase safety but still require the driver’s full attention, hence their semi-autonomous label.
Credit: Tesla
For the study, the IIHS tested both Tesla Autopilot safeguards and those available in Volvo’s Pilot Assist.
The study gave 14 drivers a month with a 2020 Tesla Model 3 and required them to travel on Autopilot, when available, over one month. The IIHS wanted to see how drivers behaved leading up to, during, and after attention reminders prompted by a lack of focus on their end.
The Autopilot study found that drivers could learn safeguard sequences and identify “windows of opportunity” to perform non-driving-related tasks. These vehicles still utilized an Autopilot nag and a torque sensor to monitor whether the driver was paying attention. Failure to keep hands on the steering wheel would result in attention reminders.
Failure to change after the reminders would result in suspension of the Autopilot system, commonly referred to as “Autopilot jail.”
The study found:
“In total, the volunteers drove a little more than 12,000 miles with Autopilot engaged. During that time, they triggered 3,858 attention-related warnings from the partial automation system. About half of those alerts occurred when they had at least one hand on the steering wheel but were apparently not moving it enough to satisfy the torque sensor.”
Most warnings did not go past the initial reminder, and only 72 instances resulted in the driver not responding fast enough to prevent the alerts from escalating.
The study found that while initial warnings increased by 26 percent over the first four weeks, showing drivers were prone to expect it, escalations fell by 64 percent, meaning they did not allow the system to continue warning them.
However, this does not mean that non-driving secondary activities stopped after the first warning. Instead, the study showed something interesting:
“The researchers found that the drivers did nondriving secondary activities, looked away from the road, and had both hands off the wheel more often during the alerts and in the 10 seconds before and after them as they learned how the attention reminders worked. The longer they used the system, the less time it took them to take their hands off the wheel again once the alerts stopped.”
The IIHS admits that the safety impact of the change is hard to measure. While the agency noted that some research shows the longer a driver allows their attention to wander, the more likely they will be involved in an accident, the study also said that “even short lapses of attention become so frequent that the periods of supposed engagement between them have little value.”
The study also said the safeguards can be beneficial to behavior immediately and in the longer term, and other patterns showed potentially unintended consequences:
“The current study has shown that driver interactions with partial automation are dynamic. Some of the changes we observed indicate that system safeguards can beneficially shape behavior both immediately and in the longer term, whereas other patterns revealed potentially unintended consequences. It is important to note that these findings are likely not unique to Tesla’s Autopilot, as many systems on the market have overtly similar safeguard designs. As such, some observations from this study maybe relevant to other driver assistance technology that still requires the driver to be engaged in the driving task.”
IIHS Senior Research Scientist Alexandra Mueller, who led the study, said:
“These results show that escalating, multimodal attention reminders are very effective in getting drivers to change their behavior. However, better safeguards are needed to ensure that the behavior change actually translates to more attentive driving.”
While this study provides evidence that perhaps better safeguards are needed, it is important to note that Tesla has upgraded the in-cabin camera to monitor driver attentiveness.
Tesla activates cabin-facing camera in bid to improve vehicle safety
Additionally, many cars are on the road without these driver assistance and safety features.
Distracted driving is going to occur whether a vehicle is equipped with modern technology or not.
Tesla and other automakers have brought their newest vehicles up to speed in the fight against distracted driving, and perhaps this study showed that warnings could and should come at varying rates to prevent anticipation from drivers.
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Tesla is being sued by the family of the woman who was killed in a Texas crash involving a Model 3. The driver, who is also being sued, claimed the vehicle was operating on Autopilot mode, but Tesla executives have come out challenging that claim, stating that the driver of the vehicle overrode the system.
The lawsuit was filed by 76-year-old Martha Avila’s daughter and her husband, who allege a “design defect” involving a Tesla and a failure to warn. The suit alleges negligence against Tesla and the driver, Michael Butler.
Butler “stated he was operating with an automated driving assistance system engaged at the time of the crash,” the Harris County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. He showed no signs of intoxication and was cooperative, the Sheriff’s Office said, according to NBC News.
Just after reports of the crash and numerous headlines that immediately blamed Tesla’s Autopilot suite, both Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Head of AI Ashok Elluswamy challenged that. Musk said the crash made “no sense” given that Tesla Autopilot and Full Self-Driving do not travel at the speeds the door cameras captured the car traveling at, which Tesla says was 73 MPH.
Tesla finally clarifies fatal Texas crash, confirms driver manually overrode acceleration
Elluswamy also revealed that Tesla data showed Butler overrode the system by pressing the accelerator to 100%, and that the pedal was compressed fully even after the car had crashed. Tesla has not released this data to the public, likely because it is communicating with agencies like the NHTSA on an investigation.
The suit uses a Washington Post analysis of government data that “identified at least 17 fatal incidents linked to Tesla Autopilot.”
This is far from the first time an accident has been blamed on Autopilot. A fatal crash in Texas was blamed on Autopilot several years ago, but when Tesla released data to the NTSB, which was investigating the crash, Autopilot was not available where the crash occurred, and Autosteer was never enabled, meaning the car was manually controlled at the time of the accident.
“Application of the accelerator pedal was found to be as high as 98.8 percent,” the NTSB said in their findings. The highest recorded speed in the five seconds leading up to the impact was 67 miles per hour. The area where the crash occurred is residential, and Texas State laws… pic.twitter.com/XGD97NHVZ2
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) March 18, 2026
More information on the accident will be released as Tesla works with agencies to find the cause of the crash. From personal experience, it is hard to imagine Tesla Autopilot or FSD operating in this manner. It drives sometimes too cautiously in residential areas in parking lots, at least in my experience. Speeding happens, but at this rate in this type of area, it is hard to believe.
We look forward to more details being released with time.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has awarded the 2025-2026 Tesla Cybertruck crew cab pickup its highest honor: Top Safety Pick+. This marks the Cybertruck as the only full-size pickup to achieve this distinction in recent evaluations.
The award applies specifically to vehicles built after April 2025, following structural upgrades including front underbody reinforcements and footwell modifications.
These changes enabled strong performance in updated crash tests. The Cybertruck earned “Good” ratings in the small overlap front (driver and passenger sides), updated moderate overlap front, and updated side tests—core requirements for the Top Safety Pick+ designation.
It also secured acceptable or good headlights across trims and a “Good” rating for its standard front crash prevention system in pedestrian scenarios, along with acceptable or good performance in vehicle-to-vehicle testing.
The Cybertruck avoided every single pedestrian collision, including:
- Daytime child crossing
- Nightitime adult crossing
- Night parallel adult
In IIHS pedestrian front crash prevention tests, @Cybertruck avoided every single collision – daytime, nighttime & different angles
It was also the only pickup to earn Top Safety Pick+ (highest award) in 2026https://t.co/BNPqT9TbsW pic.twitter.com/M6nwDisBFK
— Tesla (@Tesla) June 24, 2026
In the large pickup category, competitors such as the Toyota Tundra received only a standard Top Safety Pick, while the Ford F-150 and Ram 1500 did not qualify for either award. This positions the Cybertruck as a standout in occupant protection and crash avoidance among its peers.
Credit: IIHS
Ironically, the same vehicle celebrated for superior U.S. safety performance remains banned from public roads in the United Kingdom and much of Europe. Regulators there cite the Cybertruck’s sharp external edges and highly rigid stainless-steel construction as failing pedestrian-protection standards. European and UK rules require rounded surfaces on protruding parts to minimize injury risk in collisions with vulnerable road users.
Critics also point to the truck’s substantial weight and unyielding body structure, which some argue could transfer more force to other vehicles or pedestrians rather than absorbing it.
Tesla’s engineering philosophy underpins the Cybertruck’s strong IIHS results. The vehicle features a distinctive stainless-steel exoskeleton made from ultra-hard 30X cold-rolled stainless steel. This provides exceptional structural rigidity and a robust safety cage that resists deformation in side impacts and rollovers.
Engineers designed integrated load paths to channel crash forces away from the occupant compartment while allowing controlled energy absorption in key zones. Post-April 2025 refinements to the front underbody further optimized performance in overlap crashes.
Complementing the passive structure is Tesla’s advanced active safety suite, including the standard Collision Avoidance Assist system with automatic emergency braking. This contributed directly to the vehicle’s strong front crash prevention scores. The skateboard platform and low center of gravity also enhance stability and handling, reducing the likelihood of certain crashes.
The IIHS recognition highlights how Tesla’s combination of high-strength materials, structural innovation, and software-driven safety systems can deliver top-tier protection in rigorous testing. While global regulatory differences on design and pedestrian interaction continue to limit the Cybertruck’s availability outside North America, its U.S. safety credentials set a new benchmark for full-size pickups.
Elon Musk
SpaceX’s newest Starmind will make earth data centers obsolete
Elon Musk confirmed Starmind as SpaceX’s AI satellite constellation name, targeting one million orbital compute nodes.
Elon Musk confirmed that Starmind will be the official name of SpaceX’s planned AI satellite constellation, following a trademark filing by xAI that surfaced earlier this week. Starmind is what’s being described to the FCC as a constellation of up to one million AI satellites
It’s worth noting that SpaceX’s Starlink communication satellite and Starmind are built on the same orbital infrastructure concept but serve entirely different purposes. Starlink is a connectivity network, with satellites receiving and relaying data between points on Earth, and functioning as a high-speed internet backbone in space. The satellites themselves do not process or think, and move information from one place to another, the same function a fiber cable performs underground.
SpaceX just forced Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile to team up for the first time in history
Starmind, on the other hand, is something completely different, and tather than moving data, its satellites would compute data through artificial intelligence and directly in orbit using onboard processors powered by large solar arrays. Where a Starlink satellite is essentially a very fast pipe, a Starmind satellite is a server. The practical implication is that Starmind would allow AI models to run inference, process queries, and generate outputs from space, then beam results down to users anywhere on Earth within milliseconds, and without the data ever needing to travel to a terrestrial data center.
Starship will be able to carry 30 to 50 AI1 satellites per launch, delivering the equivalent of dozens of server racks per flight, with no land acquisition, no power grid approval, and no cooling infrastructure required on the ground.
SpaceX is pursuing this new technology as terrestrial data centers are running into hard limits such as lack of physical space, community opposition, and power and water consumption at a scale that is increasingly difficult to permit. Space has unlimited solar power, natural vacuum cooling, and no zoning boards. Musk said in a June 8 video presentation that he expects space to become the lowest-cost location to deploy AI compute within two to three years. Two AI1 prototypes are scheduled to launch in early 2027, with volume production targeted for the end of that year at a new facility called Gigasat.
The real world applications Starmind enables extend well beyond powering Grok. A constellation of orbiting AI processors could run inference workloads for any paying customer, anywhere on Earth, with latency measured in milliseconds rather than the seconds associated with ground-based cloud routing across continents. Starmind, if it scales as described, would make SpaceX the landlord of AI compute the same way Starlink made it the landlord of satellite internet.
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Tesla Cybertruck is officially the safest pickup, IIHS says
