Another Tesla driver apparently fell asleep – here's what Tesla could do

Another Tesla driver seems to have fallen asleep while driving his car through the highway. The latest video comes from the Boston area, where a local man captured the video of a Tesla driver and his passenger who crashed while their car hit Interstate 90.

"I kind of looked around and saw what I thought was somebody sleeping at the wheel and I was as though it could not be right, so I I did a double take, I watched and of course that guy was just right, his head between his legs completely asleep, "Dakota Randall told a local television channel.

Randall says that he tried to wake the driver by honking without success.

This has become a regular occurrence. Last month, a Los Angeles area television station presented the video of a Tesla with a sleepy alley on Interstate 5. We covered two more incidents in June and another in the United States. Low in May.

"Many of these videos seem to be jokes or dangerous hoaxes," Tesla said in a statement. "Our driver monitoring system reminds drivers to stay engaged and prohibits the use of autopilot when warnings are ignored." Tesla says its own data shows that "drivers using autopilots experience fewer accidents".

As we noted earlier, sleep driving incidents are not limited to Tesla vehicles. Hundreds, if not thousands, of vehicles other than Tesla crash each year after their drivers fall asleep. What is important in these cases of Tesla is that, apparently thanks to the autopilot, the cars do not leave the road immediately and do not fall into a ditch. They can continue their way, sometimes for miles, while their drivers sleep.

The autopilot may have saved the lives of some Tesla pilots who would have had fatal accidents without the technology. On the other hand, the existence of the autopilot may have made drivers too confident, prompting them to get behind the wheel even though they were too tired to drive safely. In addition, it may be easier to fall asleep with the autopilot activated because the driver is not driving the car actively.

It is unclear how this will be solved – if the autopilot makes Tesla owners more or less likely to hang up as a result of drowsy driving. But anyway, Tesla has an obvious way to solve this problem once and for all.

The case for better driver monitoring systems

Currently, Tesla verifies the driver's engagement by measuring the torque on the steering wheel. "At speed on the highway, drivers generally receive warnings every 30 seconds or less if their hands are not detected on the steering wheel," Tesla said. If the warnings are ignored, the car will eventually stop.

It's better than nothing, but the driving couple is not a very effective way to determine if the driver is really attentive to the road, as these sleep-related incidents clearly show. We do not know if the driver has fallen asleep with hands on the steering wheel, or if the Tesla cars in these videos just had not forced their drivers to stop for the moment. It is also possible that some of these videos were jokes, drivers claiming to be asleep but holding the wheel down.

In any case, a more sophisticated driver monitoring technology would be useful. The state-of-the-art systems of companies like Subaru and Cadillac rely on cameras and tracking software. A system like this can indicate if a driver is looking at the road, his knees or his eyes closed and slumped in his seat. This type of system could act immediately if the driver seemed to fall asleep.

More aggressive notifications are also possible. In a comment on a previous article on sleeping drivers, the LordOfThePigs reader describes the behavior of his latest model VW vehicle. If the driver ignores the warnings for about 20 seconds, "the car shakes when applying and releasing the brakes quickly, the seat belt tightens very tightly," the reader writes.

"I have no idea what's going on then, because I have not dared to pursue the experiment," the reader reported. "The last step is scary and would wake me up if I slept (and give me an extra boost for the adrenaline that would keep me awake)."

If Tesla adopted a combination of camera-based driver surveillance and more aggressive driver notifications, the problem of idle drivers on the highway could be almost totally eliminated. It's a good idea whether or not you think the current autopilot version is already saving lives by preventing road accidents by drowsy drivers.

And to be clear, it's not just a problem for Tesla. Other builders could also use more sophisticated driver control technologies, technology that can help save lives, whether or not a vehicle is equipped with a vehicle assistance system. autopilot type driving.