I worked with a system like this many years ago in a transportation research firm. The way it worked was that it used bright IR LEDs at two different wavelengths, pointed at the driver's face, and then cameras tuned to both wavelengths, and then subtracting the images to see if the driver's eyes were open.
I sat in front of this system some, but not for any long drives, and even then I felt very uncomfortable after 10 seconds or so. While humans can't directly see IR light, I definitely felt something there, probably from the very near-IR LEDs.
> Are there systems in place to automatically invalidate sections of freeway when the government modifies them? Does the government even know that Cadillac is trying to maintain its own map of the freeways?
Indeed, a highly non-optimal situation.
The vigilance decrement is a well known and well understood condition of human nature, and Tesla and some of these other companies putting these automated, but not yet autonomous driving features in the public's hands are being willfully ignorant.
Musk may have well come out saying Walter Huang's autopilot death was his own dumb fault because he didn't have adamantium laced bones.