Sleeping On AP - Elephant in the Room

[shinytop]

In the last week or two there have been two incidents on national news where two Tesla drivers were filmed apparently sleeping while driving. Terrible idea whether they chose to or they drifted off.

But the part few, if any, are talking about is those who fall asleep in ICE cars. I have caught myself drifting off and I had to stop and wake up with No-Doz, now I guess energy bars might work. The BIG difference in ICE cars is that they often just drift of the road and the injury or death cannot be exactly tied to sleeping while driving. That big droning ICE engine and cruising on the highway are not conducive to alert driving. If you have a car with lane keeping and you are in cruise mode you could go miles before an accident just like in a Tesla.

With a Tesla the company can confirm whether or not the driving was in AP when an accident happened. Not so much with most cars on the highway.

 

[teethdood]

I fell asleep while on AP once before. 1AM and the fast left lane was being closed for road work. My hand was on the steering wheel so I have no idea how long I was out. My car plowed straight into the first traffic cone jolting me awake from my sleep. It caused a bit of damage to my car, but really I got a HUGE break. It could have been a lot worse obviously. I could have killed the construction workers in addition to myself and my family. Mea culpa. Lesson learned.

I like the GM Cruise's inside camera that can detect eye movements. The Tesla M3 has an inactivated inside cam which I hope Tesla would turn into something like the Cruise camera instead of an Uber-type recording cam. I have MXs and not M3 so there's no inside cam to enable such a feature. When and if FSD becomes a reality, the eye-detecting internal cam is rendered moot, but until then, I think it's a very good feature to have.

 

[K2500Z71]

I use AP all the time and honestly I think it would be difficult to fall asleep and have it engaged for any period of time... too little or too much resistance on the wheel and it disengages.

 

[csriram45]

so here is the question, if you fall asleep and the hands on wheel is not detected, will AP then turn off? I assume car is then like another ICE ready to hit whatever comes in its path?

 

[ValleyGeek]

so here is the question, if you fall asleep and the hands on wheel is not detected, will AP then turn off? I assume car is then like another ICE ready to hit whatever comes in its path?

At this time, if you don't acknowledge the prompts timely, the hazard lights will come on and the vehicle will slow to a stop in it's lane. I suspect it will pull off the road someday but for now it does what it can to safely stop travelling.

 

[bayx]

If you don't acknowledge even after the red warning beep comes on it just disables NAP and yea, you will crash. At least, this is the case in non-Raven models and I don't see why it would be different in the Raven either.

Waymo's tech actually has the feature where the car pulls over and stops if it can't figure out stuff. They are approved to test without any human inside their cars in some counties of Nor Cal.

 

[mknox]

If you don't acknowledge even after the red warning beep comes on it just disables NAP and yea, you will crash. At least, this is the case in non-Raven models and I don't see why it would be different in the Raven either.

Not quite. Tesla's AP has never worked that way. You will get a succession of louder audio and visual alerts, then it will put the 4-ways on and come to a stop.

 

[bayx]

Not quite. Tesla's AP has never worked that way. You will get a succession of louder audio and visual alerts, then it will put the 4-ways on and come to a stop.

This is news to me. Even on my most recent trip when I didn't touch the steering even after the red warning sound (shows the red steering wheel), it simply disengaged AP for the rest of the trip. This is how AP has always been in my 2018 MX.

 

[mknox]

This is news to me. Even on my most recent trip when I didn't touch the steering even after the red warning sound (shows the red steering wheel), it simply disengaged AP for the rest of the trip. This is how AP has always been in my 2018 MX.

Take it in for service. It is absolutely not supposed to do that... for obvious reasons. There are many, many YouTube videos demonstrating the whole warning... slow down... 4-ways flashers and stop routine the car does.

What it will do.... and maybe this is confusion...is that after you take manual control back it will prevent you from re-engaging AP for the rest of your trip. But if you do nothing... don't touch the steering wheel or pedals... it will do as described above.

 

[ajdelange]

I fell asleep while on AP once before.... My car plowed straight into the first traffic cone ...

I can confirm that AP does not see traffic cones. I was fully awake when I observed this. The car was clearly not going to move over into the still open lane without manual intervention. The ironical part of this is that earlier on the same trip I got a "Construction Detected" message which I assumed came from observing traffic cones.