The Ontario Provincial Police have charged a driver with careless driving after an officer said the person was asleep in rush-hour traffic on Ottawa's Highway 417, Electrek reported. OPP East Region posted about the stop on Wednesday morning. Police did not name the automaker or a driver-assist system in the message, but they shared a photo that Electrek said shows a new-generation Model Y. "Even though your vehicle has an autonomous driving feature, drivers are still required to pay due care and attention when behind the wheel," police said. According to OPP, the officer could see that the driver's eyes were closed and that the driver's hands were off the steering wheel. Instead of immediately lighting up the cruiser, police pulled in close to capture body-camera footage first.
Careless driving in Ontario carries a set fine of $490 and six demerit points on conviction. If the case goes to court, the Highway Traffic Act allows fines of up to $2,000, up to six months in jail, and a licence suspension of up to two years. Electrek described the Ottawa stop as at least the fifth time this year Canadian police have gone public with a sleeping Tesla driver. In March, B.C. Highway Patrol ticketed a 37-year-old woman on the Trans-Canada Highway, saying in-car video showed she was "literally asleep at the wheel." In July, a witness filmed a Tesla driver allegedly asleep between Golden and Revelstoke, with two children in the back. Further tickets in North Vancouver and Langley followed in August, Electrek said. In 2020, Alberta RCMP criminally charged a Tesla driver caught sleeping on Autopilot at 150 kilometers per hour.
The U.S. has seen similar reports. In September, Colorado State Patrol received a report of a sleeping Tesla driver on Interstate 70 near Georgetown and did not find the car, Electrek said. The same month, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi pressed the Department of Transportation after NBC News found 43 videos of drivers apparently asleep in moving Teslas, 17 of them posted in 2026. In October, a driver told the California Highway Patrol he was asleep on Full Self-Driving Supervised when his Tesla drove into a closed crash scene and hit a patrol car in Fairfield; two officers were seriously injured, Electrek reported.
Police in Ottawa did not say the driver was using Tesla's Full Self-Driving software. The charge is about attention, not about a named software version. Electrek's argument is that systems good enough to handle long highway stretches can also lull drivers into "automation complacency," a problem long studied in aviation. Tesla's owner's manual, as quoted by Electrek, says the cabin camera "does not require full visibility of the driver's eyes in order to monitor attentiveness." NHTSA forced a recall of more than 2 million Teslas in December 2023 over Autopilot monitoring. The verified Ottawa facts are the charge, the officer's account of closed eyes and hands off the wheel, and the photo of a Model Y. What software was on, if any, was not named by police in the post Electrek described.