Tesla Needs To Fix Forward Collision Warnings In Its Safety Score System

Incorrect Forward Collision Warnings

The following is a forward collision number of 130.7 I got for 1 day of driving the same route I normally do to go to my yoga class at the gym. Nothing different or unusual happened while I drove that I noticed, except that my safety score for that day was a whopping 34 out of 100 when normally, I'm at a 97 average.

This isn't normal, and I believe the problem here is that I got false positive results on forward collision warnings. Sometimes I notice the car making the sound it makes when it gets near something while I'm on the freeway, but nothing is near me and this possibly could be what is going on. Tesla is reading something near me and creating a forward collision warning when it shouldn't.

I would love to be proved wrong here, but my safety scores show that I'm consistently in the mid to higher 90 scores, and this one 34 score is an anomaly. It dropped my overall score from a 97 to a 95, and I don't think this is right or fair. I'm hoping that Tesla will take a look at this, and it will help others who are getting a lower score than necessary.

I even have a solution that I think will work for Tesla in this case and how they do forward collision warnings, and I will share that now.

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How Tesla Can Fix This

Tesla can fix this in a variety of ways, and I will propose what those are now.

The first is to only calculate a forward collision warning at a specified interval. What does this mean? It means, for example, only counting a forward collision warning once every 3 seconds or 5 seconds - or for some number of time that Tesla decides.

This will prevent a number of 130.7 of forward collision warnings, which I think is completely unrealistic. It means Tesla won't put 10 in for 1 second, it will log a forward collision warning, and then wait a few seconds before logging another.

Even if I tried, I couldn't get 130.7 forward collision warnings per 1,000 miles of driving. This number is how Tesla calculates it. To put this in another way, it's 13.7 forward collision warnings per 100 miles driven or 1.37 per 10 miles driven. There was no case where I felt like I was going to hit anything - a wall, a vehicle, or anything else.

Tesla can also fix this by making it not such a big part of the safety score. I came nowhere near hitting anything, so why did my score go to a 34? I could see if I had other days when my scores were low, then I would be a less credible source for this, but my scores are consistently high - 95 or higher.

Tesla, please review this and tell me how I'm wrong or fix what happened here. You'll also be helping other Tesla Insurance customers who may be experiencing the same thing.

What do you think? Is there something here for Tesla to fix in forward collision warnings?

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Jeremy Johnson is a Tesla investor and supporter. He first invested in Tesla in 2017 after years of following Elon Musk and admiring his work ethic and intelligence. Since then, he's become a Tesla bull, covering anything about Tesla he can find, while also dabbling in other electric vehicle companies. Jeremy covers Tesla developments at Torque News. You can follow him on Twitter or LinkedIn to stay in touch and follow his Tesla news coverage on Torque News. Image Credit, Tesla, Screenshot