Elon Musk says Tesla's updated autopilot would have prevented fatal crash

Innovative US carmaker Tesla said on Sunday that its new self-driving system would have been able to prevent the crash which led to the death of a Model S driver in May of this year.

Autopilot was launched by Tesla last October, to allow drivers to hand over some responsibility for controlling its cars to the cars themselves.

The system came under fire during the summer when it was revealed that a driver in Florida was killed in a collision with a lorry, and was found to have been using the system at the time.

CEO of the company Elon Musk said that the development of Autopilot had progressed and could have prevented the accident in Florida.

"We're making much more effective use of radar," Musk told journalists on a call. "It will be a dramatic improvement in the safety of the system done entirely through software."

Musk has consistently argued that the semi-autonomous system exists not to drive the car for the driver, but to aid them and provide greater safety, rather than reduced safety.

"Perfect safety is really an impossible goal," he said. "It's about improving the probability of safety. There won't ever be zero fatalities, there won't ever be zero injuries."