Waymo dumped partial self-driving features after discovering people sleeping while driving

Self-driving vehicle innovators Waymo revealed the company abandoned partially autonomous features because it found people napping in cars while traveling at high speeds, threatening their ability to grab hold of the wheel — if necessary.

During a tour of Waymo's testing facility on Monday, CEO John Krafcik told Reuters the company discovered the snoozing drivers during highway testing in 2013.

“What we found was pretty scary,” said Krafcik “It’s hard to take over because they have lost contextual awareness.”

After seeing this unsettling behavior on video, Waymo decided it would only focus on completely autonomous self-driving, as opposed to cars that accelerated, decelerated, and navigated on their own, but still required people to pay attention and potentially intervene.

Waymo is currently testing its completely autonomous driving technology in the Phoenix area, and they're looking for more volunteers to take part in its Early Rider Program. Those selected are transported around town along well-mapped roads in Waymo's vans, allowing the company to get public feedback about its autonomous vehicles.

But this experiment doesn't yet involve complete vehicle autonomy. In these early stages of testing, the Waymo vans come with a real human: a Waymo "test driver."

During Monday's Waymo tour, CEO Krafcik didn't tell Reuters when Waymo might start driving beyond the safe and well-traveled confines of the Phoenix area, but said they're getting "close."

In contrast with Waymo's driverless approach are partially autonomous driving features like Tesla's autopilot. While every car Telsa has built in the past year is equipped with sophisticated cameras and radars for autonomous driving, it self-driving software is lagging. For now, Tesla drivers must alway stay vigilant should their electric vehicle begin to veer off the road or miss a stop sign.

In short, there's still no sleeping while driving.