SAN FRANCISCO: Cruising along the intersecting freeways of Oakland's MacArthur Maze, a motorist was captivated by an unusual sight in the next lane: A woman in sunglasses appeared to be dozing off – head rested on a pillow – behind the wheel of a moving Tesla.

It was 2pm on Friday, Aug 22, and, according to the witness, a collision had slowed traffic. All around the seemingly sleeping woman, drivers and passengers whipped out their phones and began filming. One person posted the footage on Reddit, where it quickly went viral, drawing equal parts astonishment, outrage and disbelief.

"Wow," said Mikhayla Sowemimo after watching the 10-second video as she charged her Tesla Model 3 in a Target parking lot in San Francisco.

Sowemimo soon grasped why the clip had triggered such visceral reactions. It looked "absurd" and risky, she said. While Teslas have extensive driver-assistance features, they are not fully self-driving – and are supposed to render a cat nap impossible.

In Reddit's comments section, opinions ran the gamut. Maybe the woman deserved public exposure. Or perhaps she was acting and the whole thing had been staged.

(Inquiries to the original poster yielded no response last week).

Yet the woman also represented a sort of wish fulfillment at a moment when many consumers are fixated on the idea of owning autonomous vehicles and manufacturers are racing to create them.

For years, drivers have fantasised about napping, phone-scrolling or lounging in the back seat while the computer takes over and many have tried it, purposefully or accidentally. In 2018, California Highway Patrol officers spent seven minutes trying to outwit the autopilot system of a Tesla coasting down a Peninsula freeway. A local planning commissioner who'd had too much to drink snoozed away in the driver's seat.

Testing the limits

Now that the technology is more widely available in consumer vehicles, and not only those built by Tesla, people continue to test its limits and reignite questions about potential abuse. Automakers' efforts to install "attention monitoring" cameras and sensors seem to have been largely successful while vexing motorists who insist the safeguards – referred to as the "nag" – are too incessant, undercutting the freedom associated with self-driving.

Social media is replete with stunts in which people try to "beat" the nag by wearing glasses with fake eyes, placing weights on the steering wheel to simulate a hand applying "torque," or hanging a picture of an attentive driver in front of the "cabin" camera. This whole genre of trolling evidently caught the attention of Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk, who promised less nag in future software updates.

Meanwhile, safety experts say cars equipped with what are essentially advanced cruise control systems have clouded the definition of "autonomous" vehicles, tempting drivers and creating a quandary for law enforcement.

Highway patrol officers can cite or arrest sleepers, but there's no law against taking one's hands off the wheel, said agency spokesperson Sgt. Andrew Barclay. Some car companies, such as Cadillac, specifically market a hands-free option, displaying images of suave and relaxed motorists letting their vehicles do all the work.

The Reddit video comes at a particularly crucial moment for Tesla, which is under a microscope after a Miami jury this month ordered the company to pay more than US$240mil (RM1.01bil) over an Autopilot crash that killed one person and severely injured another. In California, officials at the Department of Motor Vehicles are seeking to suspend Tesla from doing business for a month amid allegations the company overstated its vehicles' self-driving capabilities.

Even before these developments, Tesla had stumbled in its campaign to create a mass-market autonomous vehicle. Two years ago, the company recalled more than two million electric vehicles after a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration probe that found the company's measures to prevent customers from being distracted while using Autopilot were inadequate.

The company maintains that drivers using either its Autopilot and "Full Self-Driving (Supervised)" software are safer than other humans, in part because the cars don't get tired or drunk or act impulsively.

Robotaxis?

As Tesla beefs up its attention-monitoring tech, Musk is seeking to convert the Model Y into a commercial robotaxi in Austin, Texas, a bid to counter Waymo's dominance in self-driving. Cadillac, among others, recently entered the fray, installing hands-free – but again, not autonomous – driving in eight models.

Drivers like Ernesto Caceres, though, are blurring these lines. He said he regularly relies on the "Full Self-Driving (Supervised)" mode in his Model Y for grueling commutes from his home east of Sacramento to the Bay Area. When Caceres hasn't had enough sleep, he trusts the Model Y to navigate.

"If you're steady and you have your hands on the wheel, you can sort of nap," he said, cradling his steering wheel in his left hand to show how it's done.

During one of his morning drives this past week, Caceres said he nodded off for "maybe a minute." But the car apparently noticed. After displaying a series of warnings on the dashboard touch screen, the system shut off and logged a "strikeout." If Caceres racks up five such infractions, his supervised self-driving feature is supposed to become disabled for a week.

Several Tesla drivers said in interviews that their cars would not allow their attention to drift, let alone permit them to drift off to sleep. In newer models, a camera mounted above the rearview mirror tracks a driver's head position and eye movement, and sensors on the steering wheel detect the weight of hands.

Some even said the monitors were frustratingly sensitive. Travis Turner, who drives a Model Y, lamented that if he averts his eyes for a few seconds to type an address into his navigation program, warnings flash.

Others said they like using the self-driving feature but stay vigilant for their own safety. One man charging his Tesla on a recent day at El Cerrito Plaza compared the experience to having a teenager with a learner's permit at the wheel.

'Cannot be sleeping'

Victor Diaz, the general sales manager at Cadillac Marin, said he's tested many cars outfitted with supervised self-driving and never managed to take his eyes off the road without an instant scolding from the vehicles' dashboard.

"You cannot be sleeping, you cannot be reading," Diaz said.

To demonstrate, he opened the door of a hulking black SUV parked in the dealership's showroom – the 2026 Vistiq with Super Cruise "hands-free driver assistance" technology. The behemoth had a camera at the steering column to monitor a driver's eyes and head for indications of distraction.

If the camera and steering wheel sensor detect a lapse in attention, the car will issue escalating alerts: a light bar on the steering wheel; shrill beeps; voice prompts to grab the steering wheel; seat vibrations. If a person doesn't respond after three alerts, the car brakes to a stop.

Though Diaz said he's less familiar with Tesla's safety apparatus, he's tried mimicking distracted-driver behaviour in a Cybertruck "and it wouldn't let me do that." He's among those convinced the Reddit video was staged.

Sowemimo, the driver who was charging up in San Francisco, is experimenting with workarounds for the alerts in her Model 3. She used a tried-and-true one on Tuesday, donning sunglasses before activating self-driving on the way home from In-N-Out. Burger in hand, Sowemimo jostled the steering wheel between bites.

To her satisfaction, it worked. – San Antonio Express-News/Tribune News Service