Tesla’s millions of cameras are capturing some crazy things – videos

When Tesla deployed its new TeslaCam and Sentry Mode features, it basically enabled millions of cameras (8 per car) installed on its vehicles to capture videos of their surroundings.

Those cameras are now capturing some crazy things. Here are some of the videos:

In September of last year, Tesla released a software update to enable owners of vehicles with Autopilot hardware to use the Autopilot cameras to record footage when needed – like a dashcam – hence why they called the feature: “TeslaCam“.

Building on its previously released dashcam feature, Tesla enabled the use of more cameras around the vehicle and activated a “stand-by” parking mode earlier this year.

The feature became Sentry Mode, which also includes an alarm and notification system to deter thieves even more — efficiently creating a system to watch over Tesla vehicles when their owners are not around.

It was first developed to address a growing problem with break-ins that Tesla owners were dealing with especially in California, but you film enough and you start capturing other things that have nothing to do with break-ins.

The two features combined have to result in hundreds of thousands of Tesla vehicles potentially recording people all over the world.

It is now recording some crazy things, which we reported on in a previous post in April.

Now here are some more things captured by TeslaCam and Sentry Mode over the past few months:

TeslaCam and Sentry Mode videos

Either this man doesn’t like the look of that Tesla or there’s a problem with the vehicle that makes it an extremely powerful grocery cart magnet:

Of course, the idea behind those features was to provide some video evidence in case something happens to your Tesla, but it also has an impact on other drivers.

It instantly added dashcams to an incredible number of vehicles and some owners of those vehicles are making the feature useful to other drivers who could need the footage.

Like this Tesla driver in San Antonio who captured this accident on his TeslaCam:

The Tesla owner, Venumadhav Kanaparthy, said:

“This accident happened just before me in San Antonio TX. I talked to both drivers and offered the video recorded in TeslaCam.”

It is also recording other things on the road that don’t really impact the Tesla vehicles, like this pile-up of SUVs for example:

Another interesting consequence of the feature that might not have been intended: it captures instances where Autopilot might have helped prevent accidents.

For example, here’s a TeslaCam video showing Autopilot’s side-collision avoidance feature moving away from a possible crash just when a merging vehicle was only a few centimeters away:

We have been seeing a lot more of those videos lately and more are expected as Tesla improves Autopilot and more Tesla owners start using the TeslaCam feature.

Another unintended benefit of those features: it captures unrelated funny things.

There are already a bunch of weird/funny Tesla Sentry Mode videos out there, but this one might be my favorite: sentry mode catches the girlfriend of a Model 3 owner “airing” a fart before going inside the car:

Sentry mode caught my girlfriend “airing one out” before getting in 💨 from teslamotors

They might have faked it, but I prefer to believe it’s true.


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