The aim is to help the car react in the best way to various emergency scenarios that could occur at any time.

These advances will be enabled by the integration of a new system called “Vision” into the automatic driving system. Thanks to cameras installed on the vehicle, Tesla Vision analyses the vehicle’s environment in 360 degrees so that it can “see” almost everything that is happening around the vehicle.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has announced that the system will soon be able to detect turn signals or even emergency-vehicle flashing lights in the vicinity, allowing the car to detect all current and upcoming events on the road.

This way, the autonomous car will get a little closer to human behaviour in terms of driving with “eyes” that are constantly on alert. This may help it avoid certain accidents, which can currently still occur in Autopilot mode.

For now, testing will be done by only a few United States customers enrolled in the Autopilot programme for priority access. These new features will be introduced through automatic remote software updates.