Sleeping Tesla driver crashes into highway patrol: report

FAIRFIELD, California (KRON) – Two officers sustained serious injuries after a Tesla driver who was allegedly asleep behind the wheel crashed into a California Highway Patrol vehicle Tuesday in Fairfield, according to authorities.

CHP said the incident happened Oct. 13 as the officers were investigating a fatal crash on Interstate 80 eastbound.

The Tesla, driven by a 22-year-old Sacramento man, was traveling at freeway speeds when it entered the closed lanes and hit the patrol vehicle, which was occupied by the two officers, CHP said.

Authorities confirmed that the crash occurred even though “the lanes were closed with flares and cones, and several emergency vehicles were at the scene with emergency lights flashing.”

Local home with unusual kitchen goes viral Both officers are recovering, and the Tesla driver sustained minor injuries, according to CHP.

“The driver claimed he was asleep and that the vehicle was operating in Tesla’s Full Self-Driving mode at the time of the crash,” CHP said. “Despite its name, Full Self-Driving is not fully autonomous. It is an SAE Level 2 driver assistance system that requires continuous driver supervision.”

It is not clear at this time what charges the driver faces. An investigation is ongoing.

FSD monitors your eyes and will give you a strike if you look away to long. Repeated strikes will disable it, when that happens if in motion the car will pull over and come to a stop on the shoulder. It then refuses to move until you take manual control.

Autopilot the older cruise version uses driver monitoring too but it uses the steering wheel servos to measure of a hand is on the wheel, this can be defeated by either draping your hand over the wheel or using a clip on aftermarket weight to mimic the slight pulls of a hand.

Never ver of Autopilot use the same eye monitoring as FSD inside you can defeat that by wearing sunglasses or polarized lanes that are polycarbonate which is opaque to the short wave IR the cams use to track the eyes day and night. Same goes for FSD it’s a defeat the system then falls back to the steering wheel servos to measure if a hand is present. In autopilot if you press the throttle manual input overrides the cruise control in FSD it’s a hard disconnect.

So if someone fell asleep in Autopilot with their hand on the wheel it will think you are still there and keep going like any other cruise control would.

FSD would start striking you until it kicks you off FSD into time out and a pull over and stop. There is time between when it starts to strike you and when it puts you in time out. This is a window at highway speeds could be a couple miles long it is conceivable this incident happened during the FSD strike out countdown.

Tesla hive mind will have the full black box telemetry and provide it to the investigators as they always do.

My bet owning 2 Tesla a Model 3 and Y is that this was in Autopilot with a sleeping drivers hand on the wheel and older version of Autopilot it’s just cruise control that holds the lane and can come to a halt if it sees objects ahead but if the drivers foot is on the pedal that overrides the braking there will be a message on the display. Specifically “Cruise control will not brake”

My parlay bet would be FSD in strike out countdown period. It’s not instant and at highway speeds could be a couple miles long.

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