Federal regulators examine Fairfield crash in which a Tesla driver said he was asleep

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s inquiry into a Solano County crash that injured two CHP officers revives a five-year federal question: whether Tesla’s driver-assistance software keeps drivers engaged.

By Staff Reporter

Federal auto-safety regulators said on Friday that they were investigating a crash on Interstate 80 in Fairfield in which a Tesla struck a California Highway Patrol cruiser parked inside a closed-off crash scene, seriously injuring two officers, after the driver told investigators he had been asleep with driver-assistance software engaged, NBC News reported.

The inquiry by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration puts a Solano County freeway at the center of a long-running federal debate over Tesla’s Autopilot and Full Self-Driving systems, made by a company that builds cars in Fremont and has long been rooted in the Bay Area. It also arrives as California’s own regulators and Tesla remain in court over how the company has marketed those features.

What happened on I-80

The crash occurred just before midnight on Tuesday, Oct. 13, on eastbound I-80 west of Air Base Parkway. About an hour earlier, a 19-year-old San Pablo man driving a Honda Civic lost control and was struck by a Chevrolet Tahoe; he later died at a hospital, according to the CHP Four officers were still working that scene, with four lanes closed and traffic diverted into the slow lane, when a Tesla driven by a 22-year-old Sacramento man went through a pattern of flares and cones and struck a Dodge Charger patrol car with two officers inside.

Both officers were taken to NorthBay Hospital in Fairfield and later released, CBS Sacramento reported. The Tesla driver was not seriously hurt. The patrol released dashcam video of the impact on Thursday.

“Two Solano CHP officers were seriously injured when a Tesla struck their patrol vehicle on I-80 eastbound, despite flares, cones, and flashing emergency lights,” the agency’s headquarters wrote on X. “The driver claimed he was asleep while using driver-assistance technology. Drivers must remain alert and in control.”

Important facts remain unsettled. The CHP has said it does not yet know whether Full Self-Driving was active, and it has not identified the Tesla’s model or software version, NBC Bay Area and Electrek reported. For now, the driver’s account is the main evidence that the system was engaged; the car’s own data logs, which Tesla can retrieve, would show what the software was doing. Both crashes remain under investigation.

A familiar pattern for federal regulators

Crashes into emergency scenes are the scenario that first drew sustained federal scrutiny of Tesla. In August 2021, NHTSA opened an investigation after a series of Teslas using Autopilot struck stopped police cars and fire trucks, many of them at night with flares and flashing lights on scene. That inquiry ended with Tesla’s December 2023 recall of more than two million vehicles, addressed by an over-the-air software update that added driver-attention alerts. In June 2024, a Tesla using Full Self-Driving hit a parked police car in Fullerton while officers handled a fatal crash; that driver admitted to being on his phone, Electrek noted.

The agency’s attention has since shifted toward Full Self-Driving. On March 18, NHTSA opened an engineering analysis, EA26002, covering an estimated 3,203,754 Tesla vehicles equipped with the software, to examine whether it can detect reduced roadway visibility and warn drivers in time, according to a Sept. 9 letter to Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy from Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, an Illinois Democrat.

That letter was prompted by an August NBC News investigation that identified 43 online videos appearing to show people asleep in the driver’s seat of moving Teslas, 17 of them posted this year. Mr. Krishnamoorthi wrote that NHTSA’s earlier Autopilot review had concluded that Tesla’s driver-engagement system “did not sufficiently ensure driver attention and appropriate use of the system.” He asked the department to say how many crashes involving apparent driver disengagement it had identified since January 2024 and how well Tesla’s cabin camera works when it is obstructed or when drivers wear sunglasses. A response, if one was sent, has not been made public.

Tesla’s position, and California’s

Tesla describes the system as “Full Self-Driving (Supervised),” and its owner’s manuals say drivers must remain attentive and that a cabin camera monitors their attention. In its long-running dispute with the California Department of Motor Vehicles, Tesla’s lawyers argued that “it was impossible to buy a Tesla equipped with either Autopilot or Full Self-Driving Capability, or to use any of their associated features, without seeing clear and repeated statements that they do not make the vehicle autonomous,” CNBC reported.

The state disagreed. In December 2025, the DMV adopted an administrative law judge’s finding that Tesla’s use of “Autopilot” was misleading and violated state law. The department said in February that Tesla had stopped using the term in California marketing and would avoid a 30-day license suspension, and DMV Director Steve Gordon said the agency was “pleased that Tesla took the required action,” according to a DMV release. Tesla then sued to overturn the false-advertising finding itself; the DMV said it would defend the ruling in court.

For the Bay Area and the Sacramento corridor, the stakes are practical. I-80 through Solano County is one of the busiest freight and commuter routes in Northern California, and officers working crash scenes there depend on drivers, and increasingly on software, to respond to flares and flashing lights. Two questions left open by the CHP’s account are likely to matter most: whether Full Self-Driving was in fact engaged, and if so, why neither the software nor its driver-monitoring camera prevented a sleeping driver from reaching a closed lane at freeway speed.