These users were judged to be distracted by the vehicle's driver monitoring system because their eyes were too small.

(Image credit: CnEVPost)

Smart cars are typically equipped with in-vehicle cameras to monitor drivers for distractions. But what if the user's eyes are too small for the camera to determine? Xpeng Motors has encountered this case.

Weibo digital blogger @DerekTLM, who has about 300,000 followers, complained Monday that he was deducted a rating score when using Xpeng's NGP (Navigation Guided Pilot) assisted driving feature because the vehicle judged him distracted.

"@ XP-何小鹏, I repeat, I really just have small eyes, not fallen asleep while driving! If you don't optimize this issue, does that mean that those with small eyes don't deserve to use NGP? "The user said.

@ XP-何小鹏 is the Weibo account of Xpeng chairman and CEO He Xiaopeng.

The screenshot shared by @DerekTLM shows that it was deducted " Smart Driving Points" twice on June 26, the first time by 2 points for "prolonged distraction" and the second time by 1 point for "frequent distraction".

On July 24, he was again deducted one point for "frequent distraction."

As a background, Xpeng began a small public test of "Smart Driving Points" last November and made the system available to all users last December, the industry's first assisted driving safety system in China.

Similar to driver's license points, Xpeng owners receive an initial 100 points when they first associate their account with a vehicle, and these points are reset and restored to 100 every 12 months.

Xpeng deducts a user's points based on the level of risk for different behaviors, and if a user's points drop to zero, they will need to retake a safety test to regain their initial 100 points.

In addition to @DerekTLM, car blogger @常岩CY, who has about 1.2 million followers on Weibo, also said today that the Driver Monitoring Systems (DMS) on all the cars he has bought so far have failed to recognize his eyes.

Xpeng CEO Mr. He assigned an employee to follow up on the issue when he reposted @DerekTLM's complaint on Weibo.

Xpeng's official Weibo account, meanwhile, said the company's self-driving product team had received the request for optimization, and attached a screenshot of a chat with a photo of @常岩CY.

XPeng begins public testing of system similar to driver's license points to prevent users from abusing assisted driving features