Tesla driver appears to be asleep behind the wheel on Toronto's busy Highway 401
Ontario drivers have long been told (by way of signs posted along major highways) that "fatigue kills" (fatigue tue!) and that we should "take a break" (prenez une pause!) if we're too sleepy to keep our eyes open.
Thanks to Elon Musk and his expedient normalization of technologies that once seemed impossibly futuristic, those highway signs could be obsolete within decades... if not sooner.
Drowsiness will always prove dangerous when drivers are reliant on their own feeble human minds and bodies to operate perfectly — but computers don't get tired. They stay sharp until they die and need to be recharged.
Nobody's saying that autonomous vehicles are smarter than people (yet,) but some drivers — particularly Tesla drivers — already seem quite comfortable letting robots take the wheel.
A video posted online this week by the Toronto-based Instagram account Cara De Shaukeen shows someone who appears to be fast asleep behind the wheel of a Tesla while cruising along the 401 in Toronto.
A driver on Hwy. 401 was caught Tuesday evening with their eyes closed behind the wheel of what's believed to be a self-driving Tesla.
— blogTO (@blogTO) January 11, 2023
📹 : @CarraDeShaukeen https://t.co/IM7WGISlpw pic.twitter.com/cByodBXjxQ
The person behind the account tells blogTO that the video was sent to them by a friend and that it was filmed Tuesday night on Highway 401 near Bayview Avenue.
In the clip, we see a lone male driver in a blue electric vehicle sitting behind the wheel with his eyes closed and head tilted back as though snoozing.
While it's hard to say for certain that the driver was asleep, he doesn't appear to open his eyes once as the car seemingly drives itself down one of the highway's middle lanes next to transport trucks and other personal vehicles.
"What's more dangerous, you taping the act or him using FSD?" replied one person on Twitter, referring to the full self-driving mode beta that was just recently unlocked by Tesla in downtown Toronto and prompting CarraDeShaukeen to clarify that the video was shot by a passenger in another vehicle.
This isn't the first time that video footage has circulated of someone napping behind the wheel of a moving Telsa in Ontario, and the way things are going, it'll be far from the last.
