Tesla driver asleep on Full Self-Driving crashes into CHP cruiser on I-80, injuring two officers

A Tesla struck a California Highway Patrol cruiser on eastbound Interstate 80 west of Air Base Parkway near Fairfield just before midnight on Tuesday, October 13, seriously injuring the two officers inside, according to Electrek, KQED and CBS Sacramento. Four lanes had been closed with flares and cones while officers investigated a separate fatal crash about an hour earlier, and dash-cam video CHP released on Thursday shows the Tesla entering the closure at freeway speed and hitting the patrol car. Both officers spent the night in a Fairfield hospital and were released the next day.

The 22-year-old driver from Sacramento told CHP he was asleep while using Full Self-Driving. That statement is so far the only evidence the system was engaged: CHP has not released the vehicle's model or software version, and Tesla's logs have not been made public. CHP said that "despite its name, Full Self-Driving is not fully autonomous." No arrest has been made; a CHP sergeant said "everything is on the table" and the agency could ask the DMV to revoke the driver's license.

The crash adds to a record regulators already know well. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an investigation in August 2021 into Teslas on Autopilot crashing into stopped emergency vehicles, which ended with a December 2023 recall covering more than 2 million vehicles, and a Tesla on FSD hit a parked police car at a fatal crash scene in Fullerton in June 2024. Electrek argued that driver monitoring should have caught a sleeping driver.

What to watch for TSLA: whether Tesla's data confirms FSD was active, any NHTSA inquiry into this crash, and how it feeds into scrutiny of the company's driver-monitoring approach as it expands FSD and robotaxi service.