According to a report in September, a spokesman for Germany’s Federal Transport Authority (KBA) said an “anomaly” had been found in Tesla’s autopilot system, and announced further “remedial measures”. After restricting the Navigate on Autopilot add-on (NoA) via a software update in June, new interventions were expected, and now seems the time: German customers have reported a change in autopilot in new software releases, which according to Tesla was not necessarily voluntary. .
Autopilot now disengages before the intersection
While in North America, beta testing of new versions of the FSD autopilot program with more and more far-reaching capabilities is constantly being expanded, Europe is experiencing mainly the opposite development. In the spring of 2019, Tesla distributed an update for the Model S and Model X that limited the influence of the Autosteer steering assistant. In addition, since then you have to confirm automatic lane changes using the turn signal lever. NoA restrictions followed in June: Confirmation is now also required for motorway changes made previously without questions.
According to reports, the impetus for this came from the Kyle-Benjaman Act, and now the next step in the announced autopilot actions appears to be coming. This week, according to social media reports, Tesla owners in several countries received software releases 2022.36.1. or 2022.36.2. It seems that only this time in Germany the information contains the information that “government regulations” have “disabled autopilot at highway junctions”.
As the graphic shows (see above), this means that the Tesla system now sounds an alarm and shuts itself off if you’re near one end of one lane merging with another with Autosteer activated. So far, he is said to have occasionally headed to the new track instead, it was reported on the German TFF forum.
Tesla’s new restrictions only in Germany?
Depending on how you look at it, innovation is a loss of comfort or an increase in safety – and the Kyle-Benjaman Law perspective should be clear. The fact that Tesla mentions state regulations in the program notes shows that there is an authority behind them. Contrary to Autopilot and NoA restrictions for 2019 and June of this year, the last one was initially only reported from Germany. Thus, the Kyle-Benjaman Law may be more impatient with Tesla than its counterparts in the rest of the European Union, who operate essentially within the same legal framework. And in late September, the speaker mentioned therapeutic procedures in the plural, so at least one more procedure can be expected.
