Overview
- An Ontario Provincial Police officer stopped a motorist who was asleep with a self‑driving mode active on Highway 417, and the driver was charged with careless driving which carries a $490 fine and six demerit points on conviction.
- Const. Michael Fathi said the officer did not use sirens but pulled close to record bodycam evidence, and that proximity may have triggered an in‑car alert that woke the vehicle.
- Police and news outlets place the Ottawa case in a growing 2026 pattern of drivers—frequently in Teslas—being found asleep or unresponsive while driver‑assist systems handled highway driving.
- Reporting notes specific technical limits in some monitoring systems: Tesla relies on a cabin camera and a torque check on the wheel that can miss closed eyes or be defeated by sunglasses, and U.S. regulators forced a recall in 2023 over weak monitoring.
- The charge reinforces that legal responsibility stays with the human driver and adds pressure for tougher enforcement and technical fixes such as more robust eye‑tracking, but no regulator or manufacturer‑wide changes have been announced.