Tesla Cabin Camera Lets Drivers Sleep at 100 km/h Behind Sunglasses
A viral video from a Canadian highway shows a car cruising at high speed while the driver dozes off behind dark sunglasses, exposing a known flaw in the cabin monitoring system.
A viral video recorded on a highway in British Columbia, Canada, captured a woman asleep behind the wheel of a moving Tesla at over 100 km/h, with two children also inside the vehicle. The footage, highlighted by Electrek, illustrates a persistent blind spot in how the automaker verifies driver alertness.
The vehicle’s cabin monitoring setup relies on a camera mounted above the rearview mirror to track the driver's face and eyes. However, the driver was wearing large dark sunglasses. Tesla has previously acknowledged that its camera cannot determine eye state or gaze direction through tinted lenses. When eye tracking fails, the system defaults to checking for torque on the steering wheel—a fallback that merely requires slight physical resistance, which a resting arm or dead weight can easily satisfy without the person being awake.
A witness alerted local law enforcement, who confirmed they identified the license plate and opened an investigation. Under local provincial regulations, Level 3 and higher automated driving systems remain prohibited on public roads. Tesla's Full Self-Driving operates strictly as a Level 2 driver-assist feature, meaning the driver retains full legal responsibility to supervise the car at every second.
Bypassing the cabin camera is not a new problem. Earlier reports documented drivers in China using inexpensive plastic mannequin heads costing between $20 and $50 to trick the camera into reading an attentive face.
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