Tesla's New Driver Drowsiness Feature Is Rolling Out, But Not Everyone Is Happy

Tesla owners now have access to a new safety feature called Driver Drowsiness Warning. Using footage from a camera above the rear-view mirror, this system inspects the driver for signs of drowsiness, such as yawning or blinking. If these behaviors are detected, the driver will hear an alert sound followed by a warning message on the touchscreen.

The Driver Drowsiness Warning feature only takes effect when the vehicle has been driving over 40 MPH for 10 minutes without autopilot. This safety system is optional and can be switched on and off in the Safety section of the vehicle's Controls menu. However, if it is disabled for a drive, it is automatically re-enabled when a new drive cycle begins.

This type of safety system is nothing new. For example, BMW's iDrive system has had this feature for years. Internal camera monitoring has also been a proposed solution for keeping drunk drivers off the road. But not everyone is a fan of Tesla's implementation of this technology.

This announcement was met with a mixed response on the subreddit devoted to the popular EV manufacturer, r/Teslamotors. User Lordofwar13799731 sarcastically wrote that after waking up at 4:30 AM, "I'm sure the beeping won't be extremely annoying when it does it 50 times on my way to work as I yawn." Others echoed similar concerns that the system would be more irritating than helpful.

Some users felt the feature was fine if there was a way to deactivate it. Others explained that drivers could just turn it off if it started acting up. A common complaint among the Redditors was that the company prioritized the wrong things. Many felt that Tesla should work on improving the automatic windshield wipers and the Full Self Driving feature (FSD) instead of this new feature. Some argued that a better use of the new safety system would be automatically turning on FSD if it detects drowsiness.

Another complaint was that the whole system felt creepy. Comments in the Reddit thread made it clear that not everyone wants their face recorded while driving. Accompanying the comments were links to third-party camera covers to block the camera's view. Although the recordings supposedly don't transmit outside the vehicle unless the user opts into data sharing, there have been reports of Tesla sharing invasive images and videos taken from customers' cameras. So, not everyone is convinced by Tesla's privacy promises.