How to Get the Highest Safety Score

If you’ve been passing some slow-driving Teslas on the road recently, there’s a reason for that—the new Tesla Safety Score rating system.

Tesla is preparing to offer more users access to parts of its full self-driving (FSD) software that was previously off-limits. Tesla drivers who have subscribed to FSD have been able to use most of its features, except auto-steering. That’s about to change. More Tesla drivers will be able to benefit from auto-steering on city streets, which enables the EV to make actual turns based on the navigation in the GPS.

The catch is that Tesla owners have to demonstrate that they are safe drivers through a high Tesla Safety Score in order to access Tesla’s Beta FSD features. The Safety Score is a method for assessing drivers based on five metrics. This explains why many drivers have resorted to driving extra cautiously on the roads in attempts to get higher scores to become some of the first drivers to have access to auto-steering on city streets.

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• Navigate on Autopilot: Autopilot features guide the car on and off-highway ramps and suggest lane changes to automatically engage the turn signal.
• Auto Lane Change: Assists with changing lanes without any action required by the driver.
• Auto-park: When it arrives at a parking spot, the Tesla will attempt to park itself by maneuvering itself into the open space, either by parallel or perpendicular parking the car.
• Summon: Retrieves the vehicle from a tight space using the key fob or mobile app.
• Smart Summon: Smart Summon enables the Tesla to move forward or backward in tight spaces to find the driver in a parking lot.
• Traffic and Stop Sign Control (Beta): Navigate past slower-moving traffic by automatically slowing down when stop signs and traffic lights are identified.

Despite the name of the FSD software, the car can not fully drive all by itself. Rather, FSD offers some advanced driving system tools, including automatic lane changing and auto parking. The current features do not make the vehicle autonomous. Musk has plans to enable all modern Teslas to potentially be autonomous, and the FSD is part of the path towards autonomous driving.

Around 360,000 people (or about ⅕ of Tesla owners) have paid a lump sum of up to $10,000 to have access to FSD features (New Street Research July 2021). Tesla also gives users the option to subscribe for up to $200 per month.

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Until recently, the auto-steer on city streets feature has remained available to a small handful of people. Now drivers can make a request for FSD Beta, and Beta access may be granted if the driving behavior for 7 days results in a high Safety Score. Behavior is monitored on five metrics, including potential collisions, hard braking, aggressive turning, unsafe following, and if there is forced disengagement of the autopilot system. All of these factors will contribute to your Tesla safety score and will reveal where your driving was deemed unsafe.

So it’s no surprise many Tesla owners are driving very carefully to obtain a solid score. The question is: how high does your score really need to be to access the Beta? Musk has tweeted that they plan on onboarding around 1,000 people per day, starting with the safest drivers and working their way down.

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Five Safety Factors and How to Improve Each One

As mentioned above, five Safety Factors come into play when determining a driver’s Tesla Safety Score. The following are descriptions of the five factors, including how the vehicle notifies the driver of said factors and how to prevent them from impacting your score.

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Forward Collision Warnings Per 1,000 Miles

Forward Collision Warnings occur when an object near the vehicle triggers a warning that a collision may occur without the driver’s intervention. These incidents are recorded according to the ‘medium’ Forward Collision Warning sensitivity regardless of the vehicle’s user setting. The setting has four options: OFF, late, medium, and early. This Safety Score factor measures the number of times the in-car collision warning occurs per 1,00 miles and caps the value at 101.9.

Tesla Warning: An event triggering a Forward Collision Warning produces audio and visual alerts to notify the driver that the vehicle might collide with an object without intervention. For example, when following a vehicle too closely, Forward Collision Warning alerts the driver before the car moves into the path of an object in front of the vehicle, proactively preparing them to take corrective action.

Safety Score Booster: To avoid such events from occurring, drivers need to keep a safe distance from vehicles ahead of them to allow for enough time to react, slow down, or stop. Be aware of the vehicle’s surroundings and drive slower in congested areas.

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Hard Braking

Hard braking to the point of backward acceleration in excess of 0.3g is another indication of driver behavior that may lead to potential safety issues. The Tesla Safety Score monitors the rate at which a car slows down in order to determine if there is a significant change in deceleration detected. The percentage displayed represents the amount of braking with excessive force. The Safety Score formula caps the percentage value at 7.4%.

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Tesla Warning: There are no audio or visual alerts to notify the driver of harsh braking. The anti-lock braking system (ABS) may be activated to prevent the wheels from locking when excessive force is applied to the brakes. In such cases, the ABS alert will appear. While nothing from the system indicates harsh braking, the drivers and passengers will feel as though they are being jolted forward into their seatbelts.

Safety Score Booster: To avoid hard braking from impacting your Tesla Safety Score, engage the brake pedal early when slowing down. Use regenerative braking when possible. The regeneration of brakes during driving contributes to a reduction in stopping distances and potentially avoided accidents. Maintaining adequate space between vehicles decreases the chance of having to slam on the brakes.

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Aggressive Turning

Aggressive turning occurs when a vehicle abruptly changes its path of direction by accelerating left/right in excess of 0.4g. Aggressive turning is introduced in the Safety Score formula as a percentage expressing time driven in this range compared to the proportion of time where the vehicle accelerates greater than 0.2g (4.5 mph in one second) towards the left or right. The value is capped at 17.1% in the Safety Score formula.

Tesla Warning: There are no visual or audio alerts when the vehicle turns aggressively. Similarly to excessive braking, the drivers and passengers may experience a sensation of being pulled away from the opposite direction they are heading.

Safety Score Booster: To score better on this factor, drivers can slow down their turns and lane changes. Decelerate during turns and accelerate slowly to get out of the turn. Avoid jerking the wheel unnecessarily.

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Unsafe Following

The Tesla vehicle uses its speed and the speed of vehicles in front of it to calculate the time required to safely react and stop the vehicle if the car in front suddenly stops. Unsafe following is calculated by comparing the proportion of time when the vehicle’s headway is less than 1.0 seconds to when the vehicle’s headway is less than 3.0 seconds. The vehicle has to be traveling over 50mph for the unsafe following to be measured and incorporated into the Tesla Safety Score formula as a percentage. The percentage is capped at 60% in the Safety Score formula.

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Tesla Warning: The Tesla vehicle does not alert drivers if they are following another vehicle at an unsafe distance. However, such driving behavior might trigger a Forward Collision Warning if the chances of a collision occurring increase.

Safety Score Booster: Avoid tailgating drivers by keeping a distance of several car lengths to the vehicle ahead. Weather conditions can affect the vehicle’s ability to stop. In slippery weather, allow more distance between yourself and other vehicles to allow for more time to react safely.

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Forced Autopilot Disengagement

After the driver receives three audio and visual warnings, the Autopilot function disengages for the duration of the trip. These warnings occur if the vehicle determines that the driver has become inattentive by removing their hands from the steering wheel. In the Safety Score formula, the Forced Autopilot Disengagement is introduced as a 1 or 0. The value becomes 1 if the system was disengaged during a trip and stays at 0 otherwise.

Tesla Warning: The Tesla vehicle notifies the driver with three visual and audio warnings before the Autopilot system is disengaged.

Safety Score Booster: Only use the Autopilot features in a safe and attentive manner according to the ways spelled out in the Owner’s Manual. Always be aware of the vehicle’s surroundings and keep your hands on the steering wheel at all times. Auto-steer detects hands on the wheel through slight resistance and gentle turning. In addition, Auto-steer detects hands when turn signals, buttons, or scroll wheels are engaged.

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How Your Tesla Safety Score is Calculated

To calculate the Safety Score, Tesla uses the Predicted Collision Frequency (PCF) formula to predict the number of potential collisions per 1 million miles driven. The formula is based on data collected from the five driving metrics listed above.

Predicted Collision Frequency (PCF) = 0.682854

x 1.014495 Forward Collision Warning Per 1,000 miles

x 1.127294 Hard Braking

x 1.019630 Aggressive Turning

x 1.001444 Unsafe Following Time

x 1.317958 Forced Autopilot Disengagement

The formula is modeled based on statistical fleet data over 6 billion miles. The formula will evolve as more data is collected.

The PCF score is converted to a number from 0 to 100 with the following formula:

Safety Score = 115.382324 - 22.526504 x PCF

The final score is an estimate of how many collisions may occur per million miles of driving. A driver’s daily score is not impacted by the number of miles or hours driven. Daily Safety Scores (up to 30 days) are averaged to calculate the aggregated Safety Score, and that score is displayed under “Daily Details” on the car’s screen, as pictured below.

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Safety Scores are updated every trip taken with your Tesla to keep your score as up-to-date as possible. At the end of the day, the Safety Score is no longer updated, and your score for that day is recorded. Later trips will be used to determine your score for the present day. In cases where cellular connectivity is not available, the driver might not receive immediate feedback at the end of their trip. Once the cellular connectivity returns, the information will be updated to reflect your current score.

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Safely Driving a Tesla Vehicle

Tesla will be limiting access to Beta Full Self-driving to only those with a high Safety Score, providing access to those with the highest scores first. All the information needed on how to drive a Tesla safely and productively can be found in the owner’s manual of each model as well as online on the official website; however, keep in mind some features such as autopilot navigation are still in Beta testing mode. For now, only a limited number of Tesla owners are currently the only group of drivers with access to this new safety tool. You can find out more information about how it works on Tesla’s website, along with additional resources and FAQs.

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