Tesla’s response to these videos has been consistent: Autopilot is meant to function as a complement to a conscious driver, not a replacement. If you don’t keep a hand on the wheel, your Tesla is supposed to beep at you; eventually it’s supposed to slow to a stop and put its hazard lights on. Anyway, who knows if these clips were real? Couldn’t some of them be the work of pranksters? But of course you can still fall asleep with a hand on the wheel — or you can go on YouTube and watch Tesla drivers swap tips for using a water bottle or custom “cellphone holder” to fool the system. Tesla’s own public stance on Autopilot has been muddled, with the company sometimes issuing statements that the cars possess “full self-driving” capability. As recently as 2016, the company posted video of a hands-free highway journey from a home to a parking spot outside a Tesla office, complete with a proud preamble: “The person in the driver’s seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself.”

What’s fascinating is the way the sci-fi novelty of Autopilot — combined with the deep familiarity of old-fashioned driving — manages to warp our danger-detecting radar. There are instances in which investigators have found that the Autopilot system contributed to crashes, but none of those have been captured on film. Besides, driving is already one of the more dangerous activities Americans undertake on a daily basis. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, “drowsy driving” was a factor in 91,000 crashes, resulting in 50,000 people injured and 810 deaths in 2017, so it’s theoretically possible that what some of these videos are showing us is disaster averted, not disaster in motion. (It’s also not a great idea to try filming what other people are doing on the road while you yourself are trying to drive on it.) There’s no video genre of people sleeping in cars like my 2010 Honda Civic for the simple reason that, if I fall asleep in my 2010 Honda Civic, I’m going to crash before anyone has time to pick up a phone.