I’m happily trucking down the highway in American Truck Simulator. The radio’s on, it’s a while to my next mandatory break, and there’s not too much traffic. Things are going we-OH NO, OH BALLS, THAT’S MY TURN! I’M JERKING THE WHEEL VIOLENTLY, I’M TURNING, I’VE FORGOTTEN TO BR. Right, now my truck needs to be turned the right way up. Usually, I’d need to be dragged all the way to the nearest service station, but thanks to a new feature SCS Software are starting to roll out to their truck sims, I can now be neatly plopped back onto the road.

Matter-of-factly dubbed tow to road, this new option in the established services and adjustments menu all of us rush to in ATS or its European sibling Euro Truck Simulator 2 whenever we get properly stuck is arriving as part of both games’ versions of update 1.59. Since an open beta for that update’s just gone live on Steam for American Truck Sim, you can give tow to road a go right now if you do your trucking stateside.

SCS Software explained in the open beta notes that they’ve opted to add tow to road in now in order to give folks who’ve had minor accidents a chance to avoid “unnecessary delays” in getting going again, especially if they’re trying to keep up with a multiplayer convoy. The standard tow to service option’s still there in its usual place, but is now the one to go to only if you’ve done significant enough damage to your truck that you feel you need to get to to a mechanic right away. If you’re good to keep on motoring after a quick dislodging or want to bother fixing any scrapes further down the line, tow to road’s your new number one choice.

With a small fee paid to the towing service, selecting it will see you whisked off to whatever the game dubs your “last safe location” on the road. It’s worth noting that if you stray too far from the road, the feature might not pick up a “last safe location”, this being a failsafe SCS have built in seemingly to stop people from trying to use tow to road for wanton warping around. You’ll also want to make sure your trailer stays hitched up, otherwise tow to road’ll just whisk the head of your lorry off to the safe point, abandoning your cargo.

As an impatient idiot who regularly flaunts ATS’s speed limits and red signals out of sheer laziness, as well as being a sucker for thinking things like ‘I don’t need an extra point to make this turn, I’ll just-and I’m stuck on a bush that was more solid than I thought’, this is an addition I’ve been waiting for ever since I was handed the keys to my first rig. Will it save me from my own stupidity? Inevitably, at least in cases when I’ve not hit enough that my dashboard warning lights are lit up like a Christmas tree.

If you fancy giving ATS’s 1.59 update beta a go, you can opt into it by heading to the betas section of the properties menu which is accessible via right-clicking on the game in your Steam library. The beta also introduces a number of other handy features and tweaks, such as a widget that makes checking how damaged your truck is a bit more convenient, a skill screen redesign, and adjustments to traffic audio.