Tesla FSD Driver Monitoring Bypassed by Chinese-Made ‘Dummy’

Various tricks to fool Tesla's driver monitoring system are spreading across China. While the vehicle believes the driver is watching the road ahead, the driver is actually looking at their phone or closing their eyes, leaving the driving to the assisted driving feature, which is causing concern.

The crux of the problem lies in Tesla's driver monitoring method. Contrary to consumer belief, Tesla's FSD, or Full Self-Driving, is not fully autonomous. Tesla itself describes it as a 'supervised' feature, stating that the driver must be ready to take over steering and braking at any time.

Tesla uses an interior camera and steering wheel torque detection to monitor the driver's attention. However, this case demonstrates that this monitoring system can be vulnerable to physically disguised objects.

The devices used in China are small plastic head ornaments that mimic famous actors or celebrities. Some products are little more than simple figurines, while others are reportedly designed to trick the driver monitoring camera into mistaking them for a human head or face. These products are being traded on Chinese e-commerce platforms such as Taobao, Xianyu, and Douyin for between $10 and $40.

This is not the first attempt to fool Tesla. In the past, drivers have attached weights to the steering wheel to make the car think they were holding it. Some drivers have used sunglasses or camera covers to evade the interior camera's eye-tracking, and there have even been problematic cases of drivers leaving the driver's seat empty or sitting in the back seat while using Autopilot.

In China, besides these doll heads, there have also been reports of people using photographs of faces, printed materials that appear to blink, and small screens playing looped videos.

In 2023, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration questioned whether Tesla's Autopilot driver monitoring and misuse prevention measures were adequate, leading Tesla to issue a software update recall for over two million vehicles in the US. The debate over whether Tesla's driver monitoring system is sufficient has continued since then. This case in China highlights that software updates alone cannot completely prevent deliberate misuse by drivers.

Compared to the broader automotive industry trends, Tesla's approach is also controversial. Some manufacturers combine multiple devices, such as infrared cameras, eye-tracking, hand position detection, and capacitive steering wheel sensors, to assess driver attention. In contrast, Tesla has strongly pushed a camera-centric vision system. While a camera-based approach offers advantages in cost and scalability, concerns have been raised that it can be vulnerable to 'human-like objects' or simple visual deceptions, as seen in this case.

The doll heads appearing in China may look like a silly gimmick, but they carry a significant message. The driver monitoring system is not there to annoy the driver; it is a minimal safety net for using assisted driving features that are not yet fully reliable. Fooling this system is not just a clever shortcut; it is an action that endangers the driver, passengers, and other vehicles and pedestrians on the road.