- The Porsche Macan Electric has a built-in emergency response system.
- If it detects that the driver is unresponsive, it’ll automatically come to a stop and try to wake the driver.
- In a test from Out Of Spec, it even tries to call emergency services.
The U.S. has some of the highest road deaths among developed countries due to reasons like distracted driving from increased phone use and oversized trucks and SUVs with massive blind spots that endanger pedestrians.
Automakers are responding to that by increasingly equipping their cars with advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) to minimize road accidents. According to Kyle Conner of the YouTube channel Out Of Spec Reviews, the Porsche Macan Electric’s ADAS features trigger the best coordinated response during emergencies.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has said that some ADAS features—like autonomous emergency braking and collision avoidance—save lives. Many modern cars now go much further with lane-centering assist, blind-spot detection and lane departure warning as standard.
In a real-world test of how a car reacts to unresponsive drivers, the Porsche Macan Electric stood out. Conner tested it on a highway, leaving the lane centering and adaptive cruise control switched on before taking his hands off the steering wheel.
Immediately after he moved his hands away, the Macan Electric flashed a warning on its digital gauge cluster to take back control. After a few seconds, the left side of the screen started flashing red, with a mild audio alert urging the driver to take over the steering.
When Conner ignored that, simulating an unresponsive driver, the Macan Electric braked hard and came to a halt. It started honking, yanked the seat belts and turned on its hazard lights. It also unlocked all the doors, switched on the interior lighting and shifted to park.
That’s not it, the Macan Electric then auto-dialed an emergency phone number, with its exact location displayed on the central infotainment screen. A person responded—albeit after two-ish minutes—to check if everyone was okay.
If there are passengers in the Macan Electric and if the driver faces a medical emergency, they can hold the hazard button for three seconds and then the Porsche will force a stop in the same way.
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Porsche
Sure, this feature isn’t unique to the Macan. Plenty of cars have built-in emergency responses. But they vary in how they’re executed. Tesla’s Autopilot and Full-Self Driving (FSD) systems, for example, disengage if drivers repeatedly ignore steering prompts.
When there’s no response, FSD slows to a stop, activates warning flashers and sounds an alarm. And in a 2023 software update, Tesla added auto-dial to 911 if airbags were deployed in a crash.
The Macan EV, however, takes all of this to the next level.
“This is the best emergency safety [response] we have experienced. We haven’t tested a car that does this much. Every automaker should do that,” Conner said. If you’re curious about how this works, I highly recommend watching the video above. You can skip to 16:00 minutes in the video to watch it all unfold.