As Tesla has stated many times in the past, its autopilot mode should not be considered as a self-driving feature. In fact some authorities have even taken offense to Tesla marketing the feature, claiming that it can mislead customers into thinking that they can drive their cars without paying attention to the road.However Tesla believes that its autopilot feature, if anything, is supposed to make it safer for everyone which is why in a recent announcement, the company has announced some changes to its autopilot mode that will let it run in “shadow mode” to gather data to help show false positives and negatives of its software.
Now this does not actually affect the driving of the car itself or the feature. Rather it sort of runs in the background and just records data, like when the car should have taken action in the event of an accident. For example if you get into an accident, the data collected from shadow mode will be able to tell Tesla had autopilot been enabled, would the accident have been avoided, or if autopilot could have potentially caused the accident?
Basically Tesla is adding an additional layer of checking to prove that autopilot is a safe feature. Speaking to reporters, Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk believes that this data could help with the approval from regulators regarding self-driving technology. “I think at that point regulators would be comfortable approving it.”
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