https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/324225
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Police Catch Tesla Autopilot Driving Home Sleeping Drunk
It took the police officers in two vehicles seven minutes to outsmart
Tesla's Autopilot system.
One day in the not too distant future, sleeping at the wheel will become
commonplace because we'll all be traveling around in autonomous
vehicles. However, in 2018 that's not the case, even if Tesla Autopilot
is capable of driving a drunk man home.
As HotHardware reports, California Highway Patrol officers recently
spotted a Tesla Model S driving south on Highway 101 with what looked to
be a person asleep behind the wheel. Sure enough, when officers looked
more closely they discovered a man who was both asleep and unresponsive.
That man was 45-year-old Alexander Samek, a Los Altos planning
commissioner, and he was drunk.
Tesla's Autopilot is quite an advanced autonomous driving aid, but it's
not fully-autonomous and requires an alert driver behind the wheel at
all times. Samek had decided in his drunken state to entrust his drive
home to Tesla's system and clearly relaxed a little too much during the
journey.
The problem officers had when they couldn't wake Samek was how to go
about stopping the car. In the end it took two patrol cars around seven
minutes to bring it to a halt. First the officers slowed traffic down
behind the vehicle to create a gap, then one patrol vehicle drove in
front of the car while the other drove behind and slowly lowered their
speed. In the end, the Model S was brought to a standstill in the middle
of the highway thinking it was stuck in a traffic jam.
Samek was then woken up with some loud knocks on the driver's side door.
He was asked to carry out a field sobriety test and then promptly
arrested. If this is Samek's first DUI then he faces up to six months in
jail, fines and penalties of up to $1,000, and a potential six month
license suspension. However, he may also face additional charges because
he was asleep at the wheel which may count as reckless driving.
Image credit: Bloomberg | Getty Images
Matthew Humphries
Senior Editor
This story originally appeared on PCMag
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