A hacker with a history of unveiling new Tesla features has discovered the EV automaker has been, very quietly, monitoring the yawning and eye blinking rate of drivers in order to calculate how drowsy a driver is becoming.
The hacker, known as Green, revealed this information via Twitter.
“Looks like Tesla is planning a big boost to (camera based) driver monitoring. They are now tracking additional things like how many yawns the driver had recently, how many blinks and how long they were, leaning. All this is to calculate how drowsy the driver is,” the post states.
That cabin-facing camera is located directly above the rearview mirror. Interestingly, the monitoring of the driver takes place not only when drivers have engaged Autopilot or Full Self-Driving Beta, but also in regular driving situations.
As some of the responses to the tweet have suggested, the fact that drivers are being monitored without their knowledge is concerning but not surprising.