Regarding Falling Asleep in Assisted Driving: Learn to Audit the System First

I spent two days trying to break down whether drivers can sleep while using assisted driving into a production line health check sheet. First, let's define the boundaries: I do not recommend anyone actually sleeping in a car. The news here in the US is that a House Representative is calling for NHTSA to investigate Tesla drivers intentionally sleeping. I started using FSD last week, used it for less than a week, and these past few days I've been trying a clumsy method: every time I drive a segment, I fill in a row across four categories: Person, Car, Road, Data. In production lines, have we actually run this? That's usually my first question. How much has yield improved? I also look for stable data first, not just one demo.

Two men driving a sedan correspond exactly to the "Person" column. The driver isn't necessarily watching the road, and the passenger isn't necessarily responsible for monitoring.

Take a piece of paper, or create a new spreadsheet. Write four columns in the header: Person, Car, Road, Data. "Person" refers to the driver's state: where their eyes are looking, if their hands are on the wheel, if they are fatigued. "Car" refers to the system mode: assisted driving, lane keeping, or automatic lane change, and if there are alarms. "Road" refers to the scenario: highway, city, construction zone, near emergency vehicles. "Data" refers to whether evidence can be retained: speed, lane, attention, takeover requests.

First, fill in one row with a real scenario. Write: urban expressway, system maintaining lane, driver hands off the wheel, high risk. Seeing both the "Person" and "Car" columns marked red in the table, the expectation is to instantly see who is taking the blame. Then fill in another row with normal operating conditions. Write: highway, system requests takeover, driver subsequently grips the wheel, medium risk. Here you need to distinguish two things: did the system remind, and did the person respond. Then fill in public investigation info into the "Data" column. NHTSA once analyzed over 900 crashes believed to involve Autopilot, finding at least 400+ related to the system, 13 fatal, and pointing out vulnerabilities in driver engagement systems—drivers could continue driving even without looking at the road. When seeing this row, don't just blame the driver; ask if the system kept the driver attentive.

The most common mistake is hearing "assisted driving" as "autonomous driving." Marketing terms contain "auto," but legally and in terms of liability, the driver is usually still the primary responsible party. Another pitfall is looking only at single videos, ignoring long-term stability. When doing production line quality inspection, my biggest fear is a good-looking single-point demo that fails when materials, environments, or shifts change. I used three-color lights on the production line for three weeks; now when looking at cars, I habitually categorize them into green/yellow/red. Only stable operation counts as green. I only touched visual cameras yesterday, so I know that what the camera sees and what the system believes are two different things.

Another pitfall is non-traceable data. Without logs, post-accident discussions become arguments. Previously, I thought defining L2 responsibility relied heavily on legal definitions and public pressure; my thinking has changed now—product transparency and data traceability are more critical. NHTSA rejected a recall petition regarding unintended acceleration, citing that they reviewed data from over 2 million Teslas and found no evidence of loss of control. With data, you can clarify; without data, you get suspected.

When wrapping up this table, you can set a line for yourself: if the "Person" column is marked red three consecutive times, stop handing tasks to the system; if the "Data" column is blank, don't believe the safety claims in marketing. The next step is to use this table to compare driver monitoring strategies of two cars. Sit still, observe the dashboard, camera prompts, and takeover requests, without performing any dangerous operations.

Whether you can trust it depends on whether the system reminds promptly, ensures reliable takeover, and leaves evidence when the driver is distracted.