Another day, another video of a someone asleep at the wheel of a Tesla while driving. It seems like an almost constant stream.
In October 2025, a sleeping Tesla driver in Illinois rear-ended a parked police SUV. In November 2025, the driver of a robotaxi in San Francisco was filmed falling asleep three times during a journey. In May, police in California caught the driver of a Cybertruck asleep cruising along Highway 101 only weeks after another driver was spotted asleep in her Tesla driving in southern California. Also in May, a passenger in a Tesla recorded his Uber driver asleep for most of his 20-minute trip. In 2023, a woman was recorded napping at the wheel of a Tesla in southern California. In 2022, the driver of a Tesla appeared to be asleep, gliding along the Queen Elizabeth Way in southern Ontario.
But none of these drowsy drivers can compete with the latest addition to the “Sleeping Tesla” oeuvre. This one is the Mona Lisa and it comes from British Columbia.
On July 5, Carleigh King and her family were in transit when they spotted a woman who appeared to be asleep behind the wheel of a Tesla. The Musk Mobile was driving through the mountains of the Trans-Canada Highway between Alberta and British Columbia. King reported the incident to the RCMP and began recording.
The video is sublime.
It begins with a glimpse of the lush green B.C. landscape. A grey Tesla (it looks like a Model Y) with pink door handles cruises into view. A woman is sprawled in the driver’s seat, her head flopped to her right shoulder, her mouth slightly agape. She wears large dark sunglasses. There is a stuffed animal on the dashboard. What puts the scene right over the top, what takes it to the next level, is the Domino’s pizza box sitting on the dashboard next to the stuffed animal. It’s this final touch that puts this portrait – let’s call it “Tesla Driver in Slumber” – on the same level as Frederic Leighton’s Flaming June and Vermeer’s A Maid Asleep.
Leighton’s masterpiece, according to Alison Hokanson, assistant curator of the Department of European Paintings at The Met, “promoted the idea that a work of art could concern itself exclusively with harmony and beauty and need not convey a narrative or deeper meaning.” The Met’s online resources state that Vermeer’s “depiction of a young maid dozing next to a glass of wine … transfigured an ordinary scene into an investigation of light, colour and texture that supersedes any moralizing lesson.”
King’s “Tesla Driver in Slumber” demonstrates that the human craving for domesticity and comfort can outstrip technology such as Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving Mode” (FSD). When engaged, FSD can be used on any type of roadway, including residential and city streets. The driver must, however, “pay attention to the road and be ready to take over at all times.” The FSD uses a cabin camera to gauge driver attentiveness. It monitors the driver’s eyes to ensure the driver is awake and paying attention to the road.
According to Electrek, “The driver in the video was wearing large sunglasses. That’s the problem: with the eyes hidden, the camera can’t confirm attention, so the system falls back to the older steering-wheel “nag” – periodic checks for torque on the wheel.”
“I was like, ‘That lady looks like she’s sleeping,’ and I did a triple-take,” King told CTV News. “My first thought was maybe she’s in trouble – a medical emergency.”
Or an acute case of medium pepperoni with extra cheese.
While Vermeer’s maid has her glass of wine, the sleeper in “Tesla Driver in Slumber” has her Domino’s pizza box. The driver has transformed her Tesla’s liminal space into a comfy living room. The viewer can intuit her chain of thought: Eat pizza. Hug stuffed animal. Fall asleep while driving through the mountains on the Trans-Canada Highway.
Now, we don’t know for certain if the driver King filmed conked out in a Tesla was unconscious. The driver may have been faking it or simply “resting her eyes.” She may have been part of a roving performance art troupe and merely pretending to be asleep while driving a Tesla to make a point about human agency in an age of autonomous vehicles and artificial intelligence.
It should go without saying but falling asleep while driving, even in a car with Level 2 semi-autonomous technology, is illegal and dangerous. With this system, the driver is responsible all the time and must always supervise the driving.
Drowsy driving can have lethal consequences and is prevalent. A 2025 survey commissioned by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine found 41 per cent of American adults reported they have “felt so sleepy while driving that it affected their ability to drive safely.”
The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety analyzed data collected by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration between 2017 and 2021. They found 17 per cent of fatal crashes involved a drowsy driver and an estimated 29,834 people were killed in crashes that involved drowsy drivers.
The “Tesla Driver in Slumber” news could be seen as a positive story for Tesla. Their FSD prevented a crash. Lately, the company has been the subject of far more calamitous stories. On June 28 in Nevada, a Tesla Semi truck struck two vehicles stopped at a red light, killing two people. Also in June, a man in Texas was charged with manslaughter after his Model 3 drove into a family home killing a grandmother.
In an ironic twist, it’s possible that “Tesla Driver in Slumber” will inspires thousands of other drivers to try sleeping while driving what they consider to be self-driving vehicles. When these folks read the headline “Viral video appears to show woman asleep behind the wheel on busy B.C. highway,” a lightbulb goes on and their takeaway is “You can be asleep behind the wheel of a Tesla?”
We can look forward to more additions to the sleeping driver collection.