Tesla Starts Rolling Out Automatic Collision Evasion With FSD v14.3.9

Tesla started pushing software update 2026.27.6 to a first wave of vehicles on the night of September 8, and it carries the most interesting safety addition the company has shipped in a while: Automatic Collision Evasion. Teslarati confirmed receiving the update alongside Full Self-Driving v14.3.9 and a refreshed v14.2 Lite build, with the rollout expanding from there.

What happened

The update bundles three things. FSD v14.3.9 arrives with no additional release notes compared to the previous version — Tesla appears to have used it for behavioral refinements rather than headline features. FSD v14.2 Lite likewise carries identical release notes to its predecessor while showing improvements in behavior and performance. And riding along with all of it is Automatic Collision Evasion, a genuinely new capability that Tesla surfaced in documentation last week.

Here's the part worth reading twice: Automatic Collision Evasion activates Full Self-Driving while you are driving manually. Every FSD feature up to now has required you to engage it. This one engages itself.

The two scenarios that trigger it

Tesla's release notes spell out exactly two situations where the car will take over and, in Tesla's words, "try to keep your vehicle safe and then continue driving."

• Scenario 1: A frontal collision is imminent and braking alone may not avoid it.
• Scenario 2: The vehicle detects that you are not sufficiently attentive to the road — Tesla's own example is reaching toward the back seat — or that Full Self-Driving (Supervised) may have been unintentionally disengaged.

In practice, that means FSD steps in when the car concludes you're either about to hit something or you've stopped watching the road. Distracted driving is a serious and growing problem, and a system that can catch a driver mid-lapse is a meaningfully different kind of backstop than a warning chime.

"A frontal collision is imminent and braking alone may not avoid it." — Tesla, 2026.27.6 release notes, describing when Automatic Collision Evasion takes over.

How it compares to what other automakers offer

Collision avoidance systems aren't new. Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis all ship comparable programs that lean on radar and camera sensors to apply emergency braking autonomously when a crash looks unavoidable. What sets Tesla's implementation apart is the evasive steering component in a manual driving mode — braking hard is one thing, actively steering the car around a hazard while the human is still nominally in charge is another. That part is largely uncharted territory outside Tesla.

How v14.3.9 actually drives

Early impressions on the FSD build itself are steady rather than dramatic. Teslarati's Joey Klender took a 15-mile round trip on v14.3.9 and described it as "pretty on par with what FSD is nowadays — really good," while noting that parking remains a soft spot. That tracks with the release notes: this is a refinement release, and the safety feature is the story. For a deeper look at the Lite branch, tester Zack (@BLKMDL3) published a full review of v14.2 Lite as well.

What this means for EV owners

A few practical things follow from this update.

First, Scenario 2 makes your attention state an actual input to the car's behavior. Fumbling for a phone that's sliding around the console is exactly the kind of moment the system is watching for. Keeping your phone docked, charged, and in your line of sight is now a driving-behavior decision, not just a tidiness one — a 3-in-1 wireless charging organizer for Model 3 Highland and Model Y Juniper handles that in one part. Cybertruck owners can clean up cabin clutter and dashcam wiring at once with the 4-in-1 glove box USB hub with a dedicated dashcam port.

Second, if you like to run your display angled toward the driver for better glanceability during supervised drives, a 4-way adjustable swivel screen mounting kit for Model Y Juniper and Model 3 Highland repositions the center screen without permanent modifications.

Third, every FSD and Autopilot setting lives on that touchscreen, and you'll be poking at it more while you confirm your configuration after this update. A 15.4" center console screen protector for Model 3 and Model Y is cheap protection for the most expensive piece of glass in the cabin.

Shopping by fitment is the fastest path: browse the Model Y collection, the Model 3 collection, the Cybertruck collection, or filter everything at once in Shop by Vehicle.

The bottom line

Software update 2026.27.6 is a small release with one big idea. FSD v14.3.9 and v14.2 Lite are refinement passes with no new release notes between them, but Automatic Collision Evasion changes the relationship between driver and software — for the first time, FSD can engage on its own when the car decides a crash is coming or that you've looked away. It's still an early rollout, so watch your Tesla app over the coming days and read the release notes carefully when it lands.