Tesla Driver Claims He Was Asleep With FSD Engaged During Highway Patrol Crash
Newly released video shows the car blowing past flares and emergency lights before slamming into a parked CHP vehicle, injuring two officers.
A Tesla driver told investigators he was asleep behind the wheel with Full Self-Driving engaged when his car plowed into a parked California Highway Patrol vehicle, according to The Verge. The crash injured two officers, who were taken to a hospital.
Video released by CHP captures the moment: the Tesla speeds past flares, cones, and flashing emergency lights marking the scene of an earlier accident on I-80, then rams directly into the back of a parked patrol car without slowing down.
CHP used the incident to underscore a point it has made before about Tesla's driver-assist software. "Despite its name, full self-driving is not fully autonomous," the agency said. "Technology does not relieve drivers of their responsibility to safely operate their vehicles."
That distinction — between what FSD is named and what it actually does — has been at the center of federal scrutiny of Tesla's driver-assist systems for years. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an investigation into Tesla's Autopilot software in 2021 after a string of crashes involving Teslas striking parked emergency vehicles. The agency's subsequent report concluded that the system failed to adequately keep drivers engaged, and linked it to hundreds of crashes and dozens of deaths in situations where both the software and the driver failed to react in time.
Tesla responded with a 2023 software update that added more alerts and controls designed to push drivers to stay attentive while Autosteer is active. NHTSA wasn't satisfied that the fix went far enough, and opened a second investigation to evaluate whether the updated safeguards actually work.
This latest crash lands squarely in that unresolved gap. A driver asleep at the wheel is about as clear a failure of "driver engagement" as it gets, and it happened with the very system NHTSA has already flagged twice. CHP's warning isn't new, but each incident like this one adds weight to the agency's ongoing question: are the guardrails Tesla has built strong enough to stop someone from treating FSD as if it needs no supervision at all?
For now, the investigation into the software's adequacy remains open, and incidents like this one are likely to keep it that way.
