Look ma, no hands: Malaysian police probing Singaporean couple who drove their Tesla on autopilot to Penang
SGpikarchu travelled from Singapore to Malaysia, uploading footage of their journey onto TikTok.
PHOTO: Screengrab/TikTok/SGpikarchu
PUBLISHED ONApril 07, 2022 4:16 AMByKhoo Yi-HangIf you intend to drive your sleek, new Tesla vehicle into Malaysia, think twice before engaging the autopilot system and going hands-free.
A Singaporean couple who recently documented their trip to Penang in a Tesla on autopilot mode and uploaded it to TikTok caught the attention of the Malaysian police.
In a video posted to TikTok on Tuesday (April 5), user SGpikarchu is seen in a Tesla with his hands off the steering wheel "so [the] audience can see how well [Tesla's Autopilot system] functions".
It is one of numerous videos detailing their trip from Singapore to Malaysia.
According to Malaysia's Guang Ming Daily, Superintendent Bakri Zainal Abidin of the Bukit Aman Traffic Enforcement and Investigations Department said the agency intends to take action against the couple.
He also raised some issues with autopilot driving.
"Although there is currently no law in [Malaysia] prohibiting automatic assisted driving, the system fails to maintain driver attention and further fails to detect if a driver is even in the vehicle," Bakri said. "Drivers may focus less on the road and more on unrelated things, such as their mobile phones."
While the couple may have landed themselves in hot water for their acts in Malaysia, this doesn't mean that the regulations in Singapore are that much different.
In a reply to a parliamentary question in Nov 2021 about Tesla cars in Singapore, Minister for Transport S Iswaran said that "drivers are still required to have their hands physically on the wheel at all times and take control as needed to maintain safety".
This is in line with Tesla's regulations for their Autopilot systems, which says the driver must "keep [their] hands on the steering wheel at all times".
Iswaran added there has been no reported road traffic accident in Singapore involving a Tesla car on "Autopilot" mode as of then.
Just recently, a driver accused of a hit-run in Australia told a court that her Tesla was on autopilot.
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