Drivers on the Massachusetts Turnpike got a scare over the weekend when a man driving a Tesla was discovered asleep behind the wheel of his self-driving car.
“At no point did I feel like I was in danger until after the fact, when I thought ‘Wow, I was just driving next to somebody who was completely asleep on the Mass Pike of all places,’ like one of the most dangerous roads I can imagine,” Dakota Randall, a driver who took a now-viral video of the man, told News 7 Boston. “The car stayed the same speed in the same way on the highway, and yeah, it didn’t change at all. It was weird.”
Randall drove alongside the black two-door car and honked his horn in an attempt to wake the driver up, he said.
The video shows a second person asleep in the passenger seat as well.
Tesla has boasted its self-driving technology as among the safest of any major automaker, but federal authorities say the feature is no substitute for a human driver.
The car’s autopilot feature was responsible for at least one crash in 2018, the government said.
Some guy literally asleep at the wheel on the Mass Pike (great place for it).
Teslas are sick, I guess? pic.twitter.com/ARSpj1rbVn
— Dakota Randall (@DakRandall) September 8, 2019
The Massachusetts Turnpike is one of the most dangerous state thoroughfares in the country with hundreds of crashes each year.
State police told local media that had not received any reports of a man sleeping behind the wheel of a car but they are aware of the video.
