Yahoo Autos Tesla Spotted Driving Down Highway with Windows, Windshield Covered
Tesla has earned its fair share of criticism over the rollout of its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving driver assistance features — in no small part due to the lofty claims suggested by their names. Anyone who considers the problem more academic than practical need only to catch a glimpse of something like what some people captured on camera in California: a Tesla Model 3 driving down the highway with every piece of exterior glass obstructed.
The video was uploaded to Reddit by user u/Slimanna and later highlighted by Carscoops, and appears to show a red Model 3 traveling down Interstate 80. It's immediately apparent that the car’s front windshield is entirely blocked by a reflective sun shade, as if the owner forgot to remove it before traveling down the freeway. We know that isn’t the case however, as the Tesla makes its way through traffic closer to our camera crew.
After executing a pass on a slower moving Toyota Prius, the Tesla rolls past the camera, showing off its papered-up front and rear passenger windows. The rear window doesn’t appear to be covered, but that isn’t much of a consolation in this particular case.
No visual contact is made with the driver in the clip, but it' hard to see how they could have an unobstructed view out of the car — and thus, have genuine control of their vehicle. The car itself is a 2020 Model 3 that is registered in the state of California.
After drawing significant ire for the level of monitoring in place during the early days of the brand’s driver assistance features, Tesla has openly introduced more stringent safeguards. The vehicle’s current driver monitoring system uses a built-in camera to track the eyes of the driver to ensure attentive motoring. Still, as the video shows, the system clearly isn’t able to stop bad actors from pushing the boundaries.
This all comes on the heels of Tesla recently announcing plans to roll out its fully autonomous Cybercab by 2027. Given the timeline in place for that debut, the self-driving people movers are expected to employ the same camera-based technology as Tesla’s road cars. It's important to note that Elon Musk previously claimed that a network of autonomous Tesla taxis would be online by 2020 in April of 2019, and that the brand would achieve Level 5 autonomy by 2020 as well. Neither plan came to fruition.
Hands-free driver assistance systems can offer genuine relief on longer highway journeys, but the systems require an attentive human operator. Using any such system like this is wholly inappropriate and dangerous, and could easily have catastrophic results for other motorists. If you want to see this technology continue to develop, it’s probably best not to tempt federal regulators. Then again, more stringent regulations might be exactly what’s necessary to ensure these systems are truly up to the task.
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