cd /news/autonomous-vehicles/he-was-allegedly-asleep-as-his-tesla… · home topics autonomous-vehicles article
[ARTICLE · art-134697] src=mercurynews.com ↗ pub= topic=autonomous-vehicles verified=true sentiment=· neutral

He was allegedly asleep as his Tesla drove on a Bay Area freeway. Turns out there’s no law against that.

California Highway Patrol officers cited a Tesla driver for "unsafe speed" after pulling him over on Interstate 80 in Solano County on Sept. 2 for apparently sleeping at the wheel while the car was in self-driving mode at 60 mph, the CHP said. CHP Solano division officer Scott Heitman said there is no specific law against sleeping in a self-driving car, asking, "What's the safe speed for being asleep? Zero miles per hour." The incident follows a March viral video of a driver and front-seat passenger apparently asleep in a Tesla on Highway 4 in Pittsburg.

read1 min views1 publishedSep 19, 2026
He was allegedly asleep as his Tesla drove on a Bay Area freeway. Turns out there’s no law against that.
Image: Mercurynews (auto-discovered)

Getting your

Trinity Audioplayer ready... A Tesla’s driver was pulled over for apparently sleeping at the wheel on Interstate 80 in Solano County, the California Highway Patrol said.

Because there’s no specific law against that, he was cited for “unsafe speed.”

“What’s the safe speed for being asleep? Zero miles per hour,” said Scott Heitman, an officer with the CHP’s Solano division.

The car, in self-driving mode, was reportedly going 60 mph when an officer spotted it on Sept. 2. The driver was wearing dark glasses and slumped in his seat, the CHP said.

It’s the latest incident in which a driver was asleep or otherwise engaged in a self-driving Tesla. In March of this year, video went viral of both the driver and his front-seat passenger apparently sleeping in a Tesla on Highway 4 in Pittsburg.

── more in #autonomous-vehicles 4 stories · sorted by recency
── more on @tesla 3 stories trending now
sponsored brought to you by zahid.host 4,200+ EU-deployed projects
reading about agents? ship yours in a single git push.

Run your AI side-project on zahid.host

EU-based hosting, git-push deploys, automatic HTTPS, no cold starts. Free tier with a custom domain — perfect for shipping the agent you just read about.

$git push zahid main
Live at https://your-agent.zahid.host
Get free account → Pricing
from €0/mo · no card required
LIVE [news/he-was-allegedly-asl…] indexed:0 read:1min 2026-09-19 ·