News
Tesla rolls out latest Safety Score update—Here’s what’s new
Tesla’s latest Safety Score update drops one highly criticized factor, while adding weight to pieces like speeding, follow distance, and more.
Tesla has officially started rolling out a new version of its insurance program’s Safety Scores beta, improving upon a few different metrics that make up the index.
As detailed on the Tesla Insurance web page, the company has updated its Safety Scores to beta version 2.2 from the previous version 2.1. The update primarily includes improvements to how Excessive Speeding is measured, along with the removal of Forward Collision Warnings (FCW) from the formula.
In addition, Tesla has slightly increased the values of related factors such as Hard Braking and Unsafe Following Time in the v2.2 formula, perhaps in an attempt to help accommodate some of the situations previously covered by the FCW rating.
READ MORE ON TESLA INSURANCE: Tesla launches insurance discount for FSD users in these two states
Tesla’s Safety Scores are used to determine premium rates for buyers of the company’s in-house insurance program, except in California, where privacy laws prohibit the use of real-time driving data to determine premiums. The company also says that its latest formula for Safety Scores were generated using over 22 billion miles of fleet data from its cars, while the company plans to continue improving the formula as more data comes in.
At this time, Tesla Insurance is available in the following 12 states, though Safety Scores aren’t available in California for the aforementioned reason:
- Arizona
- California
- Colorado
- Illinois
- Maryland
- Minnesota
- Nevada
- Ohio
- Oregon
- Texas
- Utah
- Virginia
You can see the factors that make up Tesla’s Insurance Safety Scores below or on its website here, along with the specific formula that makes up a drivers’ 0 to 100 Safety Score.
Hard Braking
Credit: Tesla
Hard braking is defined as backward acceleration, measured by your Tesla vehicle, in excess of 0.3g. This is the same as a decrease in the vehicle’s speed larger than 6.7 mph, in one second. Hard braking is introduced into the Safety Score Beta formula as the proportion of time where the vehicle experiences backward acceleration greater than 0.3g as a percentage of the proportion of time the vehicle experiences backward acceleration greater than 0.1g (2.2 mph in one second). Hard braking while on Autopilot is not factored into the Safety Score Beta formula. For vehicles with Autopilot computer 3.0 or greater, braking while the vehicle detects yellow traffic lights is also not factored into the Safety Score Beta formula. If the vehicle is unable to detect a yellow traffic light at the time of the hard braking, the event will impact your Safety Score. The percentage shown in the app is the proportion of time spent braking done with excessive force when driving and Autopilot is not engaged. The value is capped at 5.2 percent in the Safety Score Beta formula.
Aggressive Turning
Credit: Tesla
Aggressive turning is defined as left/right acceleration, measured by your Tesla vehicle, in excess of 0.4g. This is the same as an increase in the vehicle’s speed to the left/right larger than 8.9 mph, in one second. Aggressive turning is introduced into the Safety Score Beta formula as the proportion of time the vehicle experiences left or right acceleration greater than 0.4g as a percentage of the proportion of time the vehicle experiences left or right acceleration greater than 0.2g (4.5 mph in one second). Aggressive turning while on Autopilot is not factored into the Safety Score Beta formula. The percentage shown in the Tesla app is the proportion of time spent turning with excessive force when driving and Autopilot is not engaged. The value is capped at 13.2 percent in the Safety Score Beta formula.
Unsafe Following
Credit: Tesla
Your Tesla vehicle measures its own speed, the speed of the vehicle in front and the distance between the two vehicles. Based on these measurements, your vehicle calculates the number of seconds you would have to react and stop if the vehicle in front of you came to a sudden stop. This measurement is called “headway.” Unsafe following is the proportion of time where your vehicle’s headway is less than 1.0 seconds relative to the time that your vehicle’s headway is less than 3.0 seconds. Unsafe following is only measured when your vehicle is traveling at least 50 mph and is incorporated into the Safety Score Beta formula as a percentage. Unsafe following while on Autopilot is not factored into the Safety Score Beta formula. The percentage shown in the Tesla app is the percentage of unsafe following when driving and Autopilot is not engaged. The value is capped at 63.2 percent in the Safety Score Beta formula.
Excessive Speeding
Credit: Tesla
Excessive Speeding is defined as the proportion of time spent driving in excess of 85 mph or driving 20% faster than the vehicle in front of you, when that vehicle is going over 25 mph and is within 100 meters of your vehicle. This value is expressed as a percentage of total driving time and is capped at 10.0% in the Safety Score Beta formula. Speeding while on Autopilot is not factored into the Safety Score Beta formula.
Late-Night Driving
Credit: Tesla
Late-Night Driving is defined as the number of seconds you spend driving at night (11 PM – 4 AM) divided by the number of seconds you spend driving total during the day and night. Due to the variable risk level associated with driving during each late-night hour, each hour is weighed differently, and driving at each hour will affect your Safety Score differently. For example, driving at 11 PM will not affect your Safety Score as heavily as driving at 2 AM. Drive sessions that span two days will apply to the day the trip ends. Late-Night Driving includes all driving at night (11 PM – 4 AM) including any driving done on Autopilot. The value is capped at 14.2 percent in the Safety Score Beta formula.
Forced Autopilot Disengagement
Credit: Tesla
The Autopilot system disengages for the remainder of a trip after the driver has received three audio and visual warnings. These warnings occur when your Tesla vehicle has determined that the driver has not applied sufficient resistance to the steering wheel or has become inattentive. Forced Autopilot Disengagement is introduced into the Safety Score Beta formula as a 1 or 0 indicator. The value is 1 if the Autopilot system is forcibly disengaged during a trip, and 0 otherwise.
Unbuckled Driving
Credit: Tesla
Unbuckled Driving is defined as the proportion of time spent driving above 10 mph without fastening the driver’s seatbelt in a Tesla vehicle, as a percentage of time spent driving above 10 mph. The value shown in the Tesla app is the proportion of time driven at a speed over 10 mph, without buckling the driver’s seatbelt, as a percentage of time spent driving over 10 mph. The value is capped at 31.7 percent in the Safety Score Beta formula.
Tesla’s formula for Safety Score beta v2.2
Tesla takes the formula pictured below, dubbed its Predicted Collision Frequency (PCF), and converts it into the 0 to 100 version 2.2 Safety Score it assigns based on driver behavior. The 2.1 Safety Score formula can also be seen on the Tesla Insurance page, though the below formula is for the newly launched version 2.2.
Credit: Tesla
Lifestyle
Tesla teases “Halloween Mode” update with Optimus rising from a graveyard
Tesla’s Halloween teaser hides a covered vehicle and an Optimus hand rising from the ground.
Tesla has started teasing a Halloween software update for its vehicles, with a short clip on X that reads, “Halloween is coming.” The clip opens on a glowing pumpkin before pulling back to the car’s center touchscreen, where the usual parked visualization has been replaced by a graveyard scene, and the vehicle draped with a white sheet so it reads as a cartoon ghost.
Halloween is coming pic.twitter.com/lM3ASUeOqX
— Tesla (@Tesla) October 1, 2026
The second detail is a robotic hand clawing its way out of the dirt like a zombie, which looks to be the hand of Tesla’s latest Optimus V3 humanoid robot. While Tesla still has not formally shown Optimus Gen 3 walking around in service, renders pulled from Tesla’s Android app last month gave the clearest look yet, including far more refined hands that Tesla has said carry 22 degrees of freedom. The hand has been the hardest part of the program. Musk has called it the majority of the robot’s engineering difficulty, and Tesla’s patents describe a design driven by tendons with the actuators moved into the forearm.
Tesla Optimus V3 hand and arm details revealed in new patents
Optimus also has a Halloween track record. Last October the robot handed out candy in Times Square, and a costumed “zombie” Optimus shuffled around the Tesla Diner in Los Angeles on Halloween night.
On the software side, Tesla’s 2025 Holiday Update expanded Santa Mode with a Santa sleigh, snowmen, snow effects, and a festive lock chime, so it wouldn’t be too far fetched if we saw something similar but themed for a Halloween Mode.
Tesla Full Self-Driving is set to receive improvements to address its two biggest issues, according to a company engineer.
Director of Engineering at Tesla AI, Phil Duan, revealed in a post on X that improvements to both pothole avoidance and navigation “are coming,’ something we have heard many times in the past. However, there are a few things that seem to hint that things might be different this time around.
Improvements on both are coming.
— Phil Duan (@pduan) October 1, 2026
Pothole avoidance, navigation, speed control, and left lane camping are some of the most prevalent and frequently mentioned shortcomings of the Full Self-Driving suite. These are a few of the biggest issues that have kept Tesla Full Self-Driving as a Supervised suite, meaning drivers must remain attentive during operation.
Pothole Avoidance
Pothole avoidance was first mentioned as an “Upcoming Improvement” with the Tesla Full Self-Driving v14.3 update back in early April of this year. It was listed alongside “Expand reasoning to all behaviors beyond destination handling.”
It’s been six months since we first saw pothole avoidance explicitly mentioned, and it has not moved beyond that and joined the main release notes yet.
Tesla has not shed any light on why pothole avoidance has been such an issue for it to solve, but it also has issues identifying large bumps much of the time, so its modeling of sudden changes in road conditions is likely pretty weak at this particular point. I’ve had more issues with large bumps than potholes, personally, but both are issues that need to be resolved.
This is that big bounce that I mentioned in the quoted post.
It’s just a tad too drastic to take at the speed FSD wants to go over it. You can see me quickly swipe down into Sloth, but I intervened. https://t.co/K20PK9ysBg pic.twitter.com/81Oc82ZJcZ
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) August 2, 2026
It makes sense that things might be pretty close to being released to the public, as we are going on such an extensive period of time between it being mentioned and it actually being deployed.
Navigation
Navigation is likely the most painful part of using Full Self-Driving, as it routinely takes strange routes, has trouble with local rules (like Except Right Turn Stop Signs in Pennsylvania), and sometimes does not realize that maneuvers it is suggesting are against the law. Turning out of my neighborhood, you cannot turn left, yet my Model Y still suggests it roughly 70 percent of the time when I’m leaving.
However, Tesla might be close to a breakthrough on this. With the Summer Update, Tesla added “Preferred Routes” alongside “Automatic Navigation.”
Preferred Routes prioritized roads that the driver had actually taken before, instead of always defaulting to what the vehicle believes is the most efficient path. This has already solved many of my issues. Formerly, I would turn off the Online Routing setting, and that would eliminate most of my complaints with routing, but then you lose out later on the Live Traffic Visualization.
Tesla’s Navigation has improved tremendously thanks to the Preferred Routes release with the Summer Update, but it still could use some polishing, as it still suggests strange routes from time to time, and it also has a lot of issues getting out of a parking lot. I find that those truly confuse FSD sometimes.
News
SpaceX’s midnight spy satellite launch quietly set a new record
Falcon Heavy launched its first NRO mission while SpaceX landed four boosters in one day.
SpaceX closed out one of its busiest days ever with a midnight Falcon Heavy launch from Florida, and the rocket’s two side boosters came home to finish off a landing record the company had never set before.
Falcon Heavy lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at 11:54 p.m. ET Thursday carrying NROL-97, a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office. It was the first time the NRO has flown on Falcon Heavy after 22 missions on Falcon 9, and the first NRO mission bought through the National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 2 contract awarded in 2025, according to Spaceflight Now.
Falcon Heavy lifts off from pad 39A in Florida for the 14th time! pic.twitter.com/uuZLKNTdD7
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 2, 2026
Roughly eight minutes after liftoff, side boosters B1104 and B1072 touched down at Landing Zones 1 and 2 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, setting off double sonic booms across Brevard County. B1104 was flying for the second time and B1072 for the fourth. Both last flew on August 30 on NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, making NROL-97 the quickest turnaround between Falcon Heavy missions to date. The brand new center core, B1106, was expended in the Atlantic so the payload could reach its high energy orbit, and SpaceX’s mission page noted the fairing had previously flown on the NROL-95 mission in July.
The two landings capped a record for SpaceX. Earlier Thursday, Falcon 9 booster B1101 returned to Landing Zone 40 after sending the Crew-13 astronauts to the International Space Station, and another Falcon 9 launched the Transporter-18 rideshare with 130 payloads from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Spaceflight Now reported it was the first time SpaceX has landed four boosters in a single day, wrapping up the triple header Teslarati previewed on Wednesday.
Falcon Heavy’s side boosters land on LZ-1 and LZ-2 pic.twitter.com/dBPcNeggFx
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 2, 2026
The mission also brought Landing Zone 1 back for what may be its final landing. SpaceX first landed an orbital class booster there in December 2015, but its lease on the former Launch Complex 13 site ended in 2025 as the company moved Florida landings to new pads at its own launch complexes. With LZ-40 already holding the Crew-13 booster, SpaceX brought LZ-1 back into service for one more night. Launch tracker Next Spaceflight listed NROL-97 as the final expected landing at the site.
NROL-97 adds to a fast growing stack of national security work for SpaceX. The company has flown four Space Force missions from Vandenberg since mid August, several believed to carry Starshield satellites, pushing its Pentagon contract total for 2026 past $8 billion. Elon Musk was also named this week to help lead the Pentagon’s Project Meridian study on the future of warfare.
The Florida doubleheader stood out for another reason. The Space Coast saw only one launch in all of September as SpaceX shifts more of its East Coast infrastructure toward Starship, which reached orbit for the first time on Flight 14 just three days earlier.
Tesla teases “Halloween Mode” update with Optimus rising from a graveyard
Tesla says fixes on Full Self-Driving’s two biggest issues are on the way
