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Police in British Columbia are investigating after a viral video shows a woman fast asleep behind the wheel of a Tesla traveling at highway speeds.
As the CBC reports, motorist Carleigh King spotted the woman with her head slumped to her side while wearing large, wraparound sunglasses. Her eyes are shut, indicating she’s fast asleep.
While officials have yet to confirm whether the driver had turned on Tesla’s controversial advanced driver assistance software, it certainly wouldn’t be the first time. We’ve consistently come across reports of people asleep behind the wheel of the vehicles for years now.
Worse yet, last year Tesla started recommending drowsy motorists switch over to its erroneously-named Full Self-Driving (FSD) feature whenever it detects them falling asleep.
According to Electrek editor in chief Fred Lambert, the driver’s large sunglasses likely tricked the vehicle’s driver-facing cabin camera — which monitors for alertness — into assuming she was attentive.
“That’s the problem: with the eyes hidden, the camera can’t confirm attention, so the system falls back to the older steering-wheel ‘nag’ — periodic checks for torque on the wheel,” Lambert explains.
A whole cottage industry of Tesla accessories have since cropped up, allowing drivers to trick torque detection by hanging a weight from the steering wheel, for instance. It’s unclear whether the driver in the viral video was using such a device.
Driving with a Level 2 autonomy system, like Tesla’s FSD, requires the driver to be able to take over control at any time. More sophisticated Level 3, 4, or 5 systems were officialy made illegal in Canada in April 2024.
Chances are that the driver could face serious legal consequences, ranging from a simple ticket to criminal charges. And if she had children in the car — a person can be seen sleeping in the passenger seat — the situation could be even worse.
“You must always be alert, sober, fully-focused on the road, at least one hand on the steering wheel,” BC Highway Patrol media relations officer Michael McLaughlin told the CDC. “It is not legal to rely on full self-driving technologies in British Columbia.”
“You can’t let the robot drive your car for you,” he added.
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