Tesla Driver Sleeping Behind Wheel Crashes Into California Patrol Car in FSD Mode
Two officers were hospitalized after a Tesla operating on driver-assist software collided with a parked highway patrol vehicle.
A Tesla driver who stated he was sleeping while utilizing the vehicle's driver-assist software collided with a stationary California Highway Patrol vehicle on Interstate 80, resulting in serious injuries to two officers, according to a report from The Verge (https://www.theverge.com/transportation/1013280/tesla-chp-fsd-crash).
Video footage released by the California Highway Patrol (CHP) shows the Tesla speeding past flares, cones, and emergency lights where officers were attending to an earlier incident, before ramming into the rear of a parked patrol car.
Both injured officers were transported to a hospital with serious injuries. Following the collision, the CHP issued a warning noting that despite its name, Full Self-Driving is not fully autonomous and does not relieve drivers of their legal obligation to safely operate their vehicles.
The incident follows years of regulatory scrutiny concerning Tesla's driver-assistance technology and emergency scene collisions. In 2021, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) opened an investigation into Tesla's Autopilot software after multiple collisions with parked emergency vehicles.
NHTSA's subsequent findings determined that Tesla's driver-assist features did not sufficiently maintain driver engagement, linking the systems to hundreds of crashes and dozens of deaths when neither the technology nor human drivers reacted in time.
Tesla deployed a software update in 2023 to add controls and alerts designed to keep drivers engaged while Autosteer is active. However, NHTSA later initiated another probe to evaluate whether those remediation measures were sufficient.
Sources
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