Is The "Sleeping Tesla Autopilot" Video Fake?

The Internet is abuzz about a video which purports to show a sleeping driver being chauffeured through stop-and-go traffic by his Tesla Model S on “Autopilot” mode. All sorts of questions have been raised: Is this legal? Is it safe? Could it happen at higher speeds? What happens when you fall asleep behind the wheel of a Model S that is doing 85 mph instead of 10 mph? Who takes vertical videos? Who takes vertical videos seriously, other than the WorldStarHipHop crowd?

I’ll answer most of these questions — below the jump, of course. But the most important question that people are asking goes like so: Is this video faked?

I’ve done virtually no exhaustive research and I’m here to tell you some stuff about autonomous Tesla autopiloting:

Is this legal? Very few jurisdictions appear to have laws that require you to be awake behind the wheel. You can be cited for falling asleep and causing an accident, but the legislative framework for you to be ticketed while you’re sleeping in a moving car is still being established. Insofar as writing said legislation is at least an order of magnitude easier than tackling our failing economy, the climate crisis, and/or rampant abuse of the immigration laws in this country, expect your local Congressman to get right on the autonomous-sleeping thing.

Is it safe? In the situation depicted by the video, it appears quite safe. Nobody’s going very quickly. The Model S is perfectly fine doing the stop-and-go thing.

Is it safe/possible at higher speeds? This video shows what happens if you ignore Autopilot’s demands for your attention:

You can see the car slowing down to a stop and putting its hazards on. Given that it’s doing it in the middle of a freeway lane, that seems to me like a brilliant way to get hit in the ass by a tractor-trailer. To me, the most fascinating part of the video is when the driver presses the gas pedal and the Tesla returns to normal Autopilot operation. It suggests to me that if you can fall asleep in such a way as to keep light pressure on the pedal, you might get away with it.

Is it possible to sleep in such a way that you keep light pressure on the pedal? Maybe. If it’s possible to fall asleep at New Jersey Motorsports Park while riding shotgun with a student who didn’t need much coaching — and it is possible — then it must be possible to fall asleep with a light foot on the throttle.

Who takes vertical videos? Idiots, people with very little grasp of technology, certain disadvantaged groups of society, the desperately poor.

Who takes vertical videos seriously? See above.

Is the video genuine? I have my doubts. Most likely it’s attempting to promote the Electrek site. It’s just too much of a coincidence that a Tesla-centric site with no user base to speak of would happen to come across this precise situation at the right time.

Real or fake, however, this video raises a hugely important question about semi-autonomous vehicles: How long will we continue the fiction that the users of Autopilot and the similar systems on the way from other manufacturers are sitting there bolt-upright and fully alert, staring down the road, ready to take competent control at the drop of a hat or the chime of a bell? Who the fuck would bother with Autopilot if that’s what you had to do? The whole purpose of autonomous vehicle operation is to give the “driver” the freedom to do something else.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but once Autopilot is made available to drivers who don’t have significant assets to lose in a civil lawsuit, we’re going to see all sorts of outrageous behavior behind the wheel, from sleeping to screwing to smoking weed. The only reason we haven’t seen more of it already is the fact that Tesla’s customer base is composed of the last people in the United States who are expected to behave: namely, the upper middle class. This video may be fake, but the situation it depicts is about to become very real.