Predicting a car crash seems a bit much. The alarm would have sounded regardless of a crash i'm guessing. I imagine it's an alarm based on the closing rate of the Tesla and objects in front of it. That's my guess. Anyone know for sure?

I think this is correct, but it's impressive that it was tracking both the car immediately in front of it as well as the car in front of that car.

The only way I could see it working as described is if the Tesla really has that good of object-detection onboard, was already tracking all objects, and was just that accurate in determining the speed of the impacted SUV and the rate of decreasing distance between it and the car that hit it.
Even if that were the case, I suspect the sensors on these cars get exponentially fidgety at longer distances and with more extreme angles (like measuring changing distance between two 'overlapping' objects directly ahead), it's really unlikely it was predicting the collision.
All that to say: Yeah, I agree. You're most probably right.

I think it's witchcraft.

I agree. The car in front didn't even slow down or apply the brakes. I'll bet they weren't even paying attention. This shows the Tesla knew what was going on ahead.

It has forward mounted radar, camera, and ultrasound. The radar will be able to distinguish an objects size, position and vector with great accuracy and precision.

This says a little about it:
https://www.quora.com/How-does-Teslas-Autopilot-work-What-are-the-sensors-that-it-uses

Looks like the warning sounds pretty much exactly when the car directly in front moves out of the way, and the sensors see the much slower moving car in front of the SUV. So no, not magic, just the thing doing what it's supposed to. Which is great, and needs to be implemented in every car in some form, as nearly all humans are shit at driving most of the time.

It's beautiful.

We have entered into the realm of what we used to call "The Future", and we haven't even noticed.

Driving your own car will soon be seen as archaic and frowned upon. Soon after it will be reserved to certain service vehicles as manually driving a regular fast moving heavy object is seen as dangerous (which it is). Tesla is the first wave towards real automation out in daily life, and thank the maker it's coming.

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I think the Tesla must've been watching the back-end of the SUV through the windows of the car behind and detected the distance between them was closing too quickly. And maybe it also took into account that the brake lights were firing.

In any case, freaking awesome safety technology. Wish I had it.

Yep, driving a car will be something you do recreationally at certain areas (racetracks, off road etc)

But no more monkeys piloting fast moving lumps of metal on open roads. Personally, I can't wait for my car to drive me home from the pub!

I wish, but probably not in my lifetime in America.
Many people here equate control of their car with control of their lives and refuse to consider any alternatives. Keep in mind, 1/4-1/2 of us here believe scientists 'made up' climate change for money (somehow, I've never heard an explanation of where that money comes from), those people aren't likely to cede control of their car to a computer made by computer scientists.
I'm not one of them, though. I'm with you, I want to be able to get in my car, tell it where to take me, and go to sleep until I'm there.

https://www.tesla.com/blog/upgrading-autopilot-seeing-world-radar
even cooler, as of a recent update the Tesla can actually bounce radar underneath and around the car ahead to the one in front of it (albeit probably at a lower resolution)
"Taking this one step further, a Tesla will also be able to bounce the radar signal under a vehicle in front - using the radar pulse signature and photon time of flight to distinguish the signal - and still brake even when trailing a car that is opaque to both vision and radar."

That was pretty cool. I wonder if the Tesla's sensors could still "see" the braking SUV as it is a bigger vehicle than the red car that rear ended it. We can't see the sides of the SUV in the video, until the red car begins its lane change, because of the wide-angle dashcam but perhaps the Tesla's sensors could.

I think the driver of the red car, who wanted to change lanes, was fixated on the black car in the right hand lane and didn't see the SUV suddenly brake. If the red car had collision avoidance capabilities, this accident would likely have been prevented.

I noticed if you block out the bright sky with your hand the dark areas brighten up a bit. FYI

And to the pub beforehand, to the shops, to mum's house, to wherever that slave car is told to go. It's gonna be so good.

In an ideal techno-utopia the car would drop me to the pub and then go round my mums house so it can listen to her complain about me...

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Public Transportation. GOOD public transportation is what I always think of when I read all this amazement at self driving cars.

We need to reduce materials going into personal transportation and reduce fossil fuel use.

This is cool. And we need more public transportation, and not toys for rich folks.

Tesla enthusiast here. The Tesla vehicle is able to use its front-mounted radar to track one car beyond the car in front of it. How does it do this? It bounces the radar signal off the street underneath the first car. In this case the Tesla could determine the position and velocity of two vehicles in front of it and it predicted a collision, sounded the alarm, and applied the brakes.

So no, it's not that the cameras are tracking objects through another vehicle's windows (at least not yet). Radar can also see though zero-visibility conditions like snow and fog.