By Shawn Henry 
A driver snoozing at the wheel of a Tesla supposedly running on Autopilot plowed straight into a parked squad car in South Barrington, Illinois. The smash-up happened in the predawn gloom on Route 59, cops nearby dealing with another traffic stop while this sleeping beauty’s ride ignored flashing emergency lights and rear-ended the SUV with bone-rattling force. Both vehicles took heavy hits, but miraculously, nobody got hurt.
The groggy motorist fessed up to nodding off—no surprise there—and got slapped with a bunch of citations. Police hammered home what Tesla’s been yapping about for years: Autopilot ain’t a magic carpet ride, still needs a human with eyes open and hands ready.
This mess is just another in a pile of Tesla wrecks where drivers treat their cars like robot chauffeurs while emergency vehicles sit ducks. The feds have had enough, digging into nearly 3 million of Elon’s brainchildren to figure out why Autopilot and Full Self-Driving keep convincing people physics doesn’t apply to them.
Crickets from Tesla on this latest wreck, though they’ve squawked before about Autopilot being a “helper,” not a replacement for common sense. Meanwhile, regulators are side-eyeing another Tesla feature accused of turning drivers into over-caffeinated speed demons—more ammo for critics who say the tech makes people cocky behind the wheel.
Safety drama aside, Tesla’s still king of the EV jungle, even if their pricing whiplash and CEO antics give Wall Street heartburn.
Bottom line? Fancier cars don’t mean dumber laws. The Barrington crash screams what experts won’t shut up about: when machines get smarter, humans gotta stay sharp. Or else.
Eve