Tesla’s Robotaxis have been involved in numerous crashes since CEO Elon Musk jumpstarted the service this summer in Texas, raising concerns that the self-driving taxicabs aren’t quite road ready.
Adding to those concerns, it’s not entirely clear that the company’s “safety” drivers, who sit in the car ready to take over if it runs into trouble, are up to the job. Case in point, a Reddit user says that one such supervisor fell asleep three times while they were a passenger in a Tesla Robotaxi in San Francisco, — and they captured one of the nap sessions on video, showing the driver slumped behind the wheel while the vehicle is moving in a dark yet comic snapshot of our technological era.
“Each time the car’s pay attention safety alert went off and the beeping is what woke him back up,” the Reddit user wrote on r/sanfrancisco. “I reported it through the app to the Robotaxi support team and told them I had videos, but I never got a response.”
Before this crazy incident, the Reddit user had used a Tesla Robotaxi a few times and found it to be a “great” experience that “felt safer than in a regular rideshare.”
“I held off on posting anything because I wanted to give Tesla a chance to respond privately,” they wrote. “It has been more than a week now and this feels like a serious issue for other riders too.”
Another Reddit user chimed in and said they had the same safety driver, who was similarly asleep during the majority of the trip.
“Dude! This was my driver too!” this person wrote. “I already reported him to Tesla. Wtf?? It was 7am driving from Temescal to SF. Took an hour with traffic and it was just this the entire time.”
Something tells us that California lawmakers will be looking extra hard at this incident — a juicy metaphor on how Musk needs to wake up to safety issues — especially since the Robotaxis’ current status from a regulatory point of view is uncertain; while Tesla has a permit from California’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to test and operate an autonomous vehicle with a supervisor driver, the company doesn’t have a permit for operation from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), which also regulates robotaxis.
By contrast, rival robocab service Waymo has permits from both the DMV and the CPUC and is reportedly safer than riding in a human-operated vehicle. This is most likely due to the fact the company has rolled out its service slowly over time with an immense focus on safety.
In addition to the permitting concerns or Robotaxi drivers taking power naps in Teslas, the vehicles feel dodgy to anyone who’s been paying attention to all the safety issues and lawsuits surrounding the vehicle’s Autopilot and Full Self-Driving systems.
The incident plus the reported accidents are just more evidence that Musk doesn’t take safety seriously, whether you’re a passenger in one of his Robotaxis or you’re a worker who is employed at SpaceX, known for deadly work hazards.
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