A driver in China’s Zhejiang province experienced an unusual problem while driving his sister’s Xiaomi SU7 Max in June 2025. The man, identified in reports as Mr. Li, said the vehicle repeatedly warned him to focus on driving even though he was awake and paying attention to the road. The warnings reportedly occurred around 20 times during the journey.
Li eventually suspected that the system was having difficulty determining whether his naturally narrow eyes were open. He said that when he deliberately widened his eyes, the warning stopped. When he allowed them to return to their normal appearance, however, the alert began again. His sister reportedly did not experience the same problem while driving the vehicle.
Xiaomi customer service explained that its driver-monitoring system uses an interior camera to detect behaviors that may indicate fatigue or distraction. These can include closed eyes, yawning, turning the head away and using a mobile phone. The company representative acknowledged that false or overly sensitive warnings can occur and said the feature can be disabled, although doing so was not recommended because it is intended as a safety feature.
The incident illustrates one challenge facing camera-based driver-monitoring technology: a safety system must distinguish genuine signs of fatigue from normal differences in appearance and behavior. In Li’s case, the reports point to a false detection involving his eye shape, but they do not establish exactly how Xiaomi trained its detection model or why its algorithm produced the error.
