Austin’s first responders are wrestling with a very modern problem: driverless ride-hail services are tying up 911 because riders fall asleep in the back seat and do not get out when the car stops. Remote rider-support teams often cannot tell whether a sleeping passenger is even breathing, so dispatchers have been treating those unresponsive robotaxi rides as potential cardiac arrests.
City staff say Austin logged about 99 of these so-called sleeper calls in 2025, with roughly 3% of incidents leading to a hospital transport, and that San Francisco reported about 250 similar calls the same year. According to a City of Austin briefing document, remote support activations that cannot verify a passenger’s condition routinely trigger Priority 1 responses that pull ambulances and fire crews off other emergencies.
How A Nap Becomes A Priority-1 Call
When a rider does not exit at their stop, a vehicle’s remote support team can end up calling 911 and trying to wake the passenger through the car’s speakers. If the operator still cannot confirm that the person is breathing, dispatchers default to the most serious medical response…