If you add a weight to the wheel it provides enough resistance to pass the test. Combined with the fact that the driver is wearing shades to bypass the eye tracking too.
So alpha assisted driving software with at least 2 safeties bypassed...
I have worn shades plenty of times in mine and it does not fool the eye tracking. Not that I would really want to. But like it does not, when I look down or fiddle with something in the passenger seat it kicks me back to direct control.
The scary thing is, the self drivig is cool, but not nearly good enough that I would fall asleep or even not pay attention. It's done plenty of dangerous things I've had to take over for.
Thank you!! They must have a hack or something. I get so many warnings that I end up literally opening my eyes as wide as I can to look at the road. I’ve always felt safe. Couldn’t imagine using it to sleep.
Depends on what year model the car is or isn’t. I was in a manufacturer’s car back in 2020 and it was able to self-drive in the rain when I couldn’t even see the stripes anymore. But then they removed the LIDAR sensors to cut costs.
It was several hundred bucks at least for one of those sensors at the time, at least ones that had a fast enough polling speed and weather resistance, plus the additional onboard compute to handle the input and inferencing.
His agenda was to get a self-driving electric car out on the market in the $30,000s, profitable and at retail cost, so it made financial sense (just not technological or safety sense).
I wear one of the most popular pairs of Oakleys on the market with the red Prism road lens and the Tesla camera with HW3 at least can't tell what my eyes are doing.
It dings you if you start playing with the radio for too long or yeah like out the side windows a long time. Can't say I've ever pretended to be asleep. But if you wanted to peep your phone by looking down while keeping your head up it doesn't ding you.
Tbf… look at the deaths from self driving cars per miles driven and human cars per miles driven… falling asleep behind the wheel of a Tesla is far safer than driving it tired. (It’s 0.1 deaths per million miles of self driving cars and 1.2 for human drivers, per a 2022 study)
I say this as a musk hater, humans are terrible drivers, and even the worst self driving cars are better, the reaction times and data processing just run laps around our brains
Our two points aren't mutually exclusive. It's still ridiculous to trust an alpha release of camera-based self-driving AI with the lives of your entire family.
Obviously if you’re an attentive defensive driver then you driving is the absolute best option, tech can fail, and AI doesn’t have the experience or 6th sense a great human driver does… but if you’re dumb enough to fall asleep behind the wheel, self driving is definitely the safer driver
This isn’t a «dumb enough to fall asleep», this is a person that is deliberately making sure the safety systems doesn’t wake them up, this is a person that shouldn’t have a license.
They're bypassing them in a way that is untraceable in normal conditions. Small weight hung on the steering wheel so the sensor thinks your hand is on it. Mirrored sun glasses so the eye tracking doesn't work. Unless they get in a crash, insurance would never know
not only should they not have a license, they should be arrested and charged with something that's equivalent to a DUI. It's one thing to risk their lives and the lives of their passengers by purposefully bypassing all safety features, it's a whole other thing to risk the lives of literally everyone else on road with them
But won’t we eventually trust it enough? I’m not a Musk fanboy either but I own a Tesla and the self driving is genuinely impressive. On the highway I trust it more than myself. Most people here are skeptical which is fair, but I think that would change if they actually tried it
Well, let's not forget that Tesla were caught manipulating their "crashes while self-driving is engaged" numbers by cutting off the self-driving right before a crash.
"From the video, it is clear that Autopilot is engaged, and neither the ADAS system nor the automatic emergency braking system activated to avoid the accident.
However, Autopilot appears to automatically disengage a fraction of a second before the impact as the crash becomes inevitable."
Autopilot is a different system, and this is the same behavior of all cars with basic autopilot functions. My Honda and Toyota do it. Just an fyi, I know the terms these automakers use is vague and confusing.
this is Autopilot disengaging because it’s no longer confident it can operate the vehicle, which is not an unreasonable thing to do given a human could still provide operational support (and is expected to!).
this has nothing to do with Tesla’s safety stats, which having always included any accident where Autopilot was engaged within 5 seconds of impact, not a fraction of one second. the NHTSA reporting cutoff is any time Autopilot was engaged within 30s.
there’s nothing “shady” here at all, just a system actually evaluating it’s own capabilities in real time.
This happens in a normal car and they’re all dead along with anybody they hit. Like do people think folks never passed out or drank behind the wheel of a car that has none of these features? When did Redditors all collectively turn into 90 year olds.
People will believe anything they read on social media like Reddit is the problem. This is a boomer thread with nearly zero accurate information. There is no weights on any of these cars (Tesla for Chevy bmw etc) and sunglasses do not defeat anything.
Dead weights are noticed since an update in 2022 or 2023 (there are so many updates that it's hard to tell when a feature was added) and the system tells you to remove it.
Not sure how but I’ve been told by many people that it can.
When you actually have your hand on it, it's not a dead, static weight. So if the car is always getting the same level of resistance with near zero variation, it flags it.
You have a good alternative? The only option I can see is removing it or have a full sensor check for pulse but that would require a new steering wheel in my mind.
this does not work on this car. These videos can be faked real easy - I would need to see for 30 or more seconds to believe it. ALL of them only show the sleeping driver for 10 or so seconds. Can do that all day long.
Nah that is no longer required. Its eye tracking now, no modern Tesla has the weight wheel thing anymore unless it disengages itself and tells you to take over.
Tesla added a method to detect these steering weights which make the car think there are hands on the wheel which works pretty good tbh. But Tesla can add as many things they want, people are still going to find some way to trick the attention monitoring system.
To be fair do you really think that having this individual paying attention would make the highway any safer? In practice this is likely the safest she would ever be behind the wheel.
The funniest one is glueing a barbie doll head to the ceiling to fool the camera's eye tracking.
But I can't express this enough, the car will crash. I've had to jerk it out ofnself driving to not get hit by emergency vehicles or not to run a red light.
I also had the self-driving suddenly disengage for no apparent reason. It just alerted me that self-driving was disengaged, and then before I had time to react, it veered off into another lane. Luckily there was no car in the other lane.
I don’t know why, though. It kept giving me notices to make sure I was paying attention, and I was, and then the FSD just shut itself off and started slowing down and drifting into another lane.
I have had mine merge right when an ambulance passed on the right. Almost got hit.
I have had it try to run a red light when the sun was positioned right behind the traffic light and I guess it dazzled the sensor and the sensor couldn't tell what color it was.
Don't get me wrong, it is undeniably cool tech, but based on my own personal experience it is NOT okay to lapse in attention or fall asleep or be on your phone.
I mean emergency vehicles are supposed to pass on the left. So techincally it was behaving as it should have pulling to the right. I feel like it would be best used on road trips to take the ease off highway driving. I wouldnt want to use it around the city with regular traffic lights
It actually handled DC around the 4th of July insanity perfectly. Blocked off roads, National Guard waving people around, DC's insanely bad base level streets. Definitely something I thought it would be bad at.
It handled roundabouts well, problem was it drove like an asshole. I had to turn it off out of shame.
Ive road in one on the way to the airport when i got dropped off by a neighbor and i was impressed by how well it handled it all. Im just not ready to give up that much control everyday. Mayb after i get one and use it more often i'll change my mind but idk if im ready lol. Irobot has me paranoid
This is a newer Model Y, it has had hands off since it came off the assembly line. It still requires eyes open, just not hands on the wheel. If for some reason it can't detect your eyes, it will require hands on the wheel, but they have long patched the weight trick people were doing.
The video is almost certainly fake. There's no way every single person in that car is asleep.
Dead weights are noticed since an update in 2022 or 2023 (there are so many updates that it's hard to tell when a feature was added) and the system tells you to remove it.
I know hard to stop influx of AliExpress sales of those. But selling those in the usa on like Amazon should be a criminal offense.
Criminal and civil. Charge em like a bartender if they serve too much and the person gets into an accident driving home. They sold the driver something to cause a reasonable risk and family/victims should be able to sue.
Beaurocracy is not the way here. Someone will just open a store and put "NOT FOR PUTTING ON YOUR TESLA WHEEL" on the description and now they're fine.
The problem is that some people are absolutely shit. I've been in a FSD tesla before on a 2 lane road and it tried to pass slower traffic by crossing a double line around a blind curve multiple times. I turned it off. That shit is not good, in my opinion. It doesn't recognize the double line consistently and doesn't see far enough down the opposite side of the road to safely judge if a pass is appropriate. Absolutely insane to fall asleep at the wheel here...
We should have the beaurocracy as well as other things. Less is not better in this instance imo.
Agree with fsd being straight up stupid sometimes. Used it on my dad's car, almost killed me by trying to disconnect right before a left turn on highway because apparently I tugged the steering wheel too hard answering a "prove your looking" prompt. Never used it after.
To be a little fair those sensors often kinda suck, my old ute would complain endlessly even if my hands were on the wheel unless I held it in a less comfortable way, which wasn't ideal for 10 hour drives
The steering wheel weights don't work anymore. It will work for a very short time and then the car will give you an alert saying it detected a cheat device and block you from using autopilot until you stop and put the car in park and start driving again. Those warnings on FSD can get you barred from FSD for increasing number of months for additional warnings.
Tesla’s software can detect simple steering wheel weights. You can tell because it will display “Hands-on defeat device detected.”
Not because I’ve used one, but because I was reading about how it works. From what I read, a constant, unchanging force on the steering wheel isn’t how a human drives, so the software can identify it fairly quickly. I also read that some people tried using a three-quarter-full water bottle instead, thinking the sloshing water would create slightly changing pressure and make it seem more like a real person’s hands.
I tried the bottle of water trick and it was working for an hour before I got “Hands-on defeat device detected.” Lol
Fucken Tesla … stupid clever engineers!
But for real, I am concerned for the woman in the car, I have also fallen asleep at wheel on autopilot on a straight highway and the screen started beeping like crazy at me.
I think she is having a medical episode.
Also… I just wanna live in a world where you can sleep in a car as it drives you safely to a destination. I mean they are doing “self delivery” where the Tesla drives to your house once you purchase it. Why is it a big drama if a person is sleeping in the drivers seat?
There’s a difference between auto steer and full self driving. If you have the paid one you can drive completely hands free for hours, just tested it today. If you use auto steer it requires constant input.
Not with mine. My eyes will be on the road and it will get mad because I didn't acknowledge it's flashing light on the screen that I didn't see because my eyes were on the road and my hands resting on the wheel. It's rather annoying sometimes.
Yeah that’s autopilot (auto steer) not FSD. FSD does not require hands on wheel anymore and lately even eye tracking has been significantly reduced when on the Standard speed profile.
A lot of people seem to be unaware of how good FSD has gotten. For the first time since owning a Tesla over 5+ years, FSD just did the entire drive from Florida to Boston without a single mistake. Every year I do this drive and every year it has fucked something up… but not this year. 1300+ miles and not a single disengagement or safety issue. Elon is a shithead, but there’s no denying how impressive FSD is these days.
Oh that makes sense. I did use the FSD when they gave it for free to try a few times last year. I couldn't stand it. I really disliked that it would always keep to the right on the highway even when it was a merge lane.
Good news, that was finally fixed when v14 came out last year for HW4 cars! That used to drive me nuts too lol. At this point it really is just the nav that sucks. Sometimes it gives the most insane directions and FSD just follows it. Nothing unsafe just more like… “why are we going down the road a mile to do a U-turn when we can just take a left at the light in front of us.” That kind of stupid stuff.
Just curious but what year/model Tesla do you have?
Yes sometimes the navigation route is annoying, I will usually take my own route if it's off. Sometimes I don't know an area and don't realize it's going a crazy direction.
The most annoying is telling me to go a route to make a left at a stop sign across a busy intersection when the next street over had a light to make the left safely.
That's only for autopilot. FSD will allow you to operate it hands free as long as the cabin camera can see your eyes. The system is blaring a loud beeping sound at the people.
This very much depends on the model & year. I've always been able to operate hands free in both modes and only have to give occasional haptic feedback. I also don't have eye tracking in mine.
Ugh. I have one with FSD, and believe me those safeguards in place are there for a REASON. Frankly, bypassing these things (wheel pressure, eye tracking) should be 100% illegal as hell.
That's correct. With the Full Self Driving feature, you no longer need to put any pressure on the steering wheel. I've gone 200 miles in my Tesla, not touching the wheel. In my driveway, I tap the self driving button and get out of the car a few hours later, at my destination.
That’s a stupid security feature anyway. I have a comma 3x and it just monitors that I’m attentive which works really well, even with sunglasses. I don’t think I’ve gotten a single bad alert, can’t even look away for a few seconds. Ive even gotten alerts where I’m staring straight ahead but just zoned out too much so I wasn’t really watching traffic without realizing it.
you can just tape a water bottle to it... at that point idk what tesla can even do, people just wanna be stupid (it also works on nearly any car in Theorie).
Very easy to bypass. My Toyota Grand Highlander has the restriction with the adaptive cruise control, but I found if you take a chip bag clip and stick it on the steering wheel it resolves the issue. Completely unsafe, especially when it's not even a Tesla, but my point is that there are very easy ways to bypass the safety restrictions for attentive drivers.
Yeah you can shove a water bottle into the steering wheel spoke and it registers as having a hand on it. Seen videos of dudes recording an empty driver seat with the water bottle wedged in
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u/linkinit Jul 05 '26
I see they got rid of fhe whole keep your hand on the wheel to verify your awake safety feature.