Elon Musk has said since even before 2016 that cars can drive themselves, despite two deaths on Tesla Autopilot in that year alone. The first was a 23-year-old man in China in January 2016. His Model S drove at full speed into the back of a road sweeper on a highway, holding a constant speed and lane position for nine minutes before impact. Chinese state television later reported that Tesla conceded Autopilot was engaged. His father said the Tesla salesman had promised him that on Autopilot “you can just sleep on the highway.”

Customers of Musk, almost eleven years later, are still falling asleep at the wheel (as Musk heavily promotes) and driving into emergency scenes:

CHP said the incident happened Oct. 13 as the officers were investigating a fatal crash on Interstate 80 eastbound, west of Air Base Parkway.

The Tesla, driven by a 22-year-old Sacramento man, was traveling at freeway speeds when it entered the closed lanes and hit the patrol vehicle, which was occupied by the two officers, CHP said.

[…] Authorities confirmed that the crash occurred even though “the lanes were closed with flares and cones, and several emergency vehicles were at the scene with emergency lights flashing.” […] CHP said, “The driver claimed he was asleep and that the vehicle was operating in Tesla’s Full Self-Driving mode at the time of the crash.”

Investigation of the crime scene evidence will surely be in context of Elon Musk statements. Here he is in February 2026, pushing sleep on drivers as “very exciting”:

Feb 2026:

And I think this year, really, it will be the case that you, from a technical standpoint, you’ll be able to fall asleep in the Tesla and wake up at your destination. So that’s very exciting.

Apr 2025:

The acid test is, can you go to sleep in your car and wake up in your destination and I’m confident that will be available in many cities in the US by the end of this year.

May 2019:

Earlier this year, Chief Executive of Tesla Elon Musk, announced that it will be safe for drivers to fall asleep in their ‘fully self-driving cars’ by the end of 2020.

Apr 2019:

We expect to be feature complete in self-driving this year, and we expect to be confident enough from our standpoint to say that we think people do not need to touch the wheel, look out of the window, sometime probably around, I don’t know, second quarter of next year.

Feb 2019:

I think we will be feature complete, full self-driving, this year, meaning the car will be able to find you in a parking lot, pick you up and take you all the way to your destination without an intervention, this year. I would say I am of certain of that. That is not a question mark. […] My guess as to when we would think it is safe for somebody to essentially fall asleep and wake up at their destination? Probably towards the end of next year.

Apr 2017:

I think [a driver will be able to sleep at the wheel in] about two years. So the real trick of it is not how do you make it work say 99.9 percent of the time, because, like, if a car crashes one in a thousand times, then you’re probably still not going to be comfortable falling asleep. You shouldn’t be, certainly.

Oct 2014:

Maybe five or six years from now I think we’ll be able to achieve true autonomous driving where you could literally get in the car, go to sleep and wake up at your destination.