An unsettling incident involving Tesla’s autonomous Robotaxi has surfaced online, capturing a safety driver appearing to fall asleep during a ride. The footage, shared by an anonymous Reddit user, was taken over a week ago on a trip to UC San Francisco’s hospital. The user recounted, “The safety driver literally fell asleep at least three times during the ride,” noting that the driver only awoke when the vehicle’s “pay attention” alert system activated with a beep.

The Redditor explained he delayed sharing the video to allow Tesla a chance to address the situation privately. “It’s been more than a week now, and this seems like a serious concern for other passengers too,” he noted. The passenger claimed to have reported the incident via the Tesla Robotaxi app, providing supporting video evidence, yet has received no response from Elon Musk’s company. He further commented that he generally favors Waymo, the autonomous vehicle service initially launched as Google’s self-driving car project.

In this instance, the passenger chose Tesla to reach his destination faster. “Waymo is great, but they don’t take the freeway yet,” he remarked, citing a 20-minute time saving compared to other self-driving services. Despite having previously used Tesla’s Robotaxi with positive experiences, describing it as safer than regular rideshares, the Bay Area user acknowledged, “This time was different.”

He said ‘major harm’ could have been caused to others and that he should have acted more forcefully once he noticed the driver drifting off. ‘I was going to the hospital before 7am in the morning for a scan and I wasn’t in a great mental space,’ he wrote. ‘In hindsight I should have woken them up, but I was more concerned about and focused on my scan.’ The user claimed he returned home in a Waymo car. He added: ‘The Tesla Robotaxi should be safer because there’s a human in the seat with the sole job of ‘safety’. In this case though, it’s a major fail.’

Tesla began rolling out its Robotaxis in the Bay Area in July. However, the company’s permit with the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) only allows for passengers to be picked up if a human is in the driver’s seat. The company does not have the CPUC’s permission to offer an autonomous passenger service to customers, unlike Waymo. Tesla also offers Robotaxis with safety monitors in Austin, Texas.

Robotaxis will soon arrive in Arizona too, but only under the supervision of a driver, Bloomberg reported. Tesla has claimed that supervised self-driving improves road safety in the US by 80 percent and could save up to 32,000 lives per year. So far in 2025 the company has reported seven crashes in Austin, according to data published by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. None of them caused hospitalizations. The Daily Mail reached out to Tesla, the California Public Utilities Commission and the anonymous Reddit user for comment.