A Tesla slammed into a police cruiser after the driver said he fell asleep behind the wheel while the vehicle’s Full Self-Driving mode was activated.
According to the California Highway Patrol, KRON4 reports, the crash happened on the night of October 13 while the officers were pulled over to the side of Interstate 80 eastbound highway to investigate a fatal accident.
Though the “lanes were closed with flares and cones, and several emergency vehicles were at the scene with emergency lights flashing,” police said, the Tesla veered into the clearly cordoned-off area and slammed into their patrol car. The impact sent their ride flying into another emergency vehicle, footage showed.
Both officers were hospitalized with serious injuries and have since been discharged from the hospital. The driver, a 22-year-old man, sustained minor injuries.
“The driver claimed he was asleep and that the vehicle was operating in Tesla’s Full Self-Driving mode at the time of the crash,” CHP said. “Despite its name, Full Self-Driving is not fully autonomous. It is an SAE Level 2 driver assistance system that requires continuous driver supervision.”
Drowsy driving is a common issue with Tesla’s FSD system, since it doesn’t require the motorist to be as engaged. To combat this, the vehicles have several safeguards to ensure drivers stay alert, including an in-cabin camera that monitors their eyes and face — but they don’t always work.
Tesla has previously been investigated by federal regulators after an older version of its self-driving software, Autopilot, repeatedly crashed into emergency vehicles. In a 2024 report, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration linked Autopilot and FSD to hundreds of crashes, concluding that it misled drivers into a false sense of security and caused them to be “not sufficiently engaged in the driving task.”
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