An Asian man picked up a Lexus loaner and immediately discovered the car’s newest “safety” feature does not work on his face.
The dashboard flashed “Closed Eyes Detected. Look Forward.” He was looking forward. His eyes were open. The infrared camera on the steering column still decided he was nodding off.
This is not an isolated Lexus problem as you will see in this clip below that Wall Street Apes posted. It is a computer-vision threshold problem that has been hitting East Asian drivers for years — first in China with XPeng, NIO, Xiaomi and others, now in American loaner lots and dealerships.
This Asian man got a loaner car from Lexus
The vehicle is equipped with new eye monitoring cameras to make sure you’re paying attention to the road. Only one problem
Because he’s Asian the Lexus registers his eyes as closed…. Many people believe this is racist
Apparently this… pic.twitter.com/R9jmERpLBF
— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) August 31, 2026
The software measures how open an eye looks. It calculates the height of the visible opening between the eyelids relative to the width (eye aspect ratio / palpebral fissure). If that number drops below a fixed value for too long, the car flags “eyes closed.” Many East Asian faces have a naturally narrower eye opening even when the eyes are fully open, thanks to epicanthic folds and almond-shaped palpebral fissures. A fully awake, fully open eye can sit right at or below the threshold the engineers chose. The camera treats a normal open eye as a closed one.
Lexus manuals even list “eyes only slightly open” and “laughing” as conditions that can trigger false warnings. Glasses, sunglasses coatings, seat height, steering-wheel position, glare, and makeup make it worse. Drivers have reported having to lean forward, sit unnaturally upright, or deliberately widen their eyes just to shut the alarm off.
How This Actually Changes Car Use for Asian Drivers
- Constant beeping and dashboard nags on the highway. What should be a quiet luxury drive becomes a fight with the car.
- Loss of driver-assist features. Many systems tie adaptive cruise, lane-centering, Traffic Jam Assist, and hands-free functions to the driver monitor. If the camera cannot “see” your eyes, those features degrade or shut off.
- In more aggressive implementations, the car can slow itself, limit throttle, or begin a pull-over sequence because it thinks the driver is unresponsive. An earlier viral case showed a 2026 vehicle cutting power on a six-lane highway after it could not lock onto the driver’s eyes.
- Loaner and rental cars are the worst. You cannot easily change settings, and the next driver inherits the same camera calibrated for a different face.
- Everyday workarounds become necessary: switch to contacts instead of glasses, raise or lower the seat so the camera sees the whole face, or hunt through menus to turn the alert off (the camera often keeps running in the background for other safety systems).
Lexus is a Japanese brand. Toyota pioneered cabin-facing driver monitoring on the 2006 Lexus GS 450h. The irony is not lost on anyone. The same companies selling cars to millions of East Asian customers shipped systems whose eye-opening threshold was apparently tuned on a narrower set of faces.
This is not “racism” in the activist sense. It is sloppy, one-size-fits-all engineering. The geometry of the measurement is the same across brands. When the training data and the threshold do not account for common East Asian facial structure, the false-positive rate jumps. Studies of drowsiness-detection models have shown weaker performance on East Asian, South Asian, and Middle Eastern faces for exactly this reason.
The problem is about to get bigger, not smaller. The European Union already requires driver drowsiness and attention warning systems. Japan will mandate cabin-facing cameras on all new cars from 2031. U.S. regulators continue pushing more in-cabin monitoring under the banner of distracted and impaired driving. Once these cameras are mandatory, “just turn it off” stops being an option for many owners.
Asian drivers — who buy a disproportionate share of luxury and hybrid vehicles in several markets — will be the first to feel the friction. They will spend more time fighting their own cars, disabling features they paid for, or simply avoiding the newest models until the software is fixed.
The real issue is not that a camera “hates” Asian faces. The real issue is that automakers and regulators are stuffing infrared cameras and rigid biometric thresholds into every new vehicle and calling it safety. Anatomy is not oppression. A dashboard babysitter that nags you because your eyelids are shaped differently is a design failure. Fix the code, widen the training set, or take the camera out.
Until then, if you have East Asian features and you are shopping for a new car, test the driver monitor before you sign. Sit in the driver’s seat. Look at the road. See whether the car believes your eyes are open.
— The Whatfinger News Team: Alex and Ben
From the folks…
- This Asian man got a loaner car from Lexus The vehicle is equipped with new eye monitoring cameras to make sure you’re paying attention to the road. Only one problem Because he’s Asian the Lexus registers his eyes as closed…. Many people believe this is racist. Apparently this is caused by a computer-vision threshold problem. The camera’s software measures how open the eye looks. They do this by meaning the height of the visible opening between the eyelids relative to the width. If that opening drops below a set value for too long, it flags “eyes closed.” Many Asian faces have a naturally narrower eye opening even when the eyes are fully open so this registers as being closed to the software – Wall Street Apes
- Those people should look up the meaning of racist. That word has been used wrong for many, many years now. It is a design flaw. It is not racist. – River Deer
- This should be obvious, but if the driver’s eyes are closed, how are they supposed to read the display telling them their eyes are closed? – Halfknight
- Continue comments below please
Resources
- Wall Street Apes: This Asian man got a loaner car from Lexus
- Carscoops: I’m Not Asleep, ‘I Just Have Small Eyes’, Say Chinese Drivers Angry At Misfiring Drowsiness-Tech
- CarBuzz: Car Safety Systems Think Chinese Drivers Are Asleep Behind The Wheel Because Of Their Small Eyes
- Wikipedia: Driver monitoring system
- The Japan Times: New cars sold in Japan from September 2031 must have driver monitoring systems
- TechTimes: Japan Mandates Cabin-Facing Cameras on All Cars From 2031
- Consumer Reports: No, Your Car Isn’t Getting a ‘Kill Switch’ in 2027
- Lexus Owner’s Manual excerpts on Driver Monitor limitations (glasses, slightly open eyes, laughing)
- ClubLexus forum: Drivers eyes closed warning on new RX
- Know Your Lexus | Driver Monitor (official explainer)
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