--- title: Driverless Car Prank: Man Dresses in Car Seat Costume description: A man disguised as a car seat drove a car around that appeared to be driverless for a study. canonical: https://time.com/4890760/driverless-car-prank-car-seat-costume/ author: Ashley Hoffman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-08-07T22:18:06.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T07:46:13.835Z og:title: A Driver Dressed Up as His Car's Seat and People Thought It Was a Driverless Car og:description: "Brother, who are you? What are you doing?" og:url: https://time.com/4890760/driverless-car-prank-car-seat-costume/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: A Driver Dressed Up as His Car's Seat and People Thought It Was a Driverless Car twitter:description: "Brother, who are you? What are you doing?" twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # A Driver Dressed Up as His Car's Seat and People Thought It Was a Driverless Car by [Ashley Hoffman](https://time.com/author/ashley-hoffman/) ## Ashley Hoffman Aug 7, 2017 10:18 PM UTC by [Ashley Hoffman](https://time.com/author/ashley-hoffman/) ## Ashley Hoffman Aug 7, 2017 10:18 PM UTC A man out to [trick people](http://time.com/4800061/viral-senior-prank/) on the road decided to go out with a bang this summer. A [van](http://time.com/4816178/apple-self-driving-car/) that appeared to have no driver behind the wheel made headlines when people spread photos of the alarming sight spotted around in Arlington, Va. last week. The photos presented pretty persuasive evidence that there was a totally empty car just riding around eerily. However, there was a driver behind the wheel, and he was dressed in a costume designed to look exactly like a car seat. (He could poke his hands through the opening in the bottom of his costume to navigate.) Tipped off by the news, dedicated [transportation reporter News4’s Adam Tuss](http://www.nbcwashington.com/on-air/about-us/Adam-Tuss-177977981.html) tried to get the costumed driver to speak to supplement the information that was already on the ground. Tuss detailed his encounter on Twitter. “Brother, who are you? What are you doing? I’m with the news, dude” Tuss said. “Dude, can you pull over and we can talk for a second?” No response. > [](https://twitter.com/AdamTuss/status/894606022681264128) > [](https://twitter.com/AdamTuss/status/894606250205425668) The driver could have gone undercover as a chair to make local commutes more confusing, but according to [NBC4 Washington](http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Driver-Dressed-Like-a-Seat-Spotted-Inside-Driverless-Van-439041863.html), he was a researcher with Virginia Tech spreading fear by riding around town in what appeared to be a driverless moving car for an academic reason. According to a university spokesperson, he was disguised to get people’s reactions to what _looked_ like a driverless car for a study. He’s not the first to pull [this fast one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVrJ8DxECbg) on the road either. Driverless Car Prank: Man Dresses in Car Seat Costume ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4890760/driverless-car-prank-car-seat-costume/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4890760/driverless-car-prank-car-seat-costume/"},"headline":"A Driver Dressed Up as His Car's Seat and People Thought It Was a Driverless Car","datePublished":"2017-08-07T22:18:06.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T07:46:13.835Z","description":"\"Brother, who are you? What are you doing?\"","url":"https://time.com/4890760/driverless-car-prank-car-seat-costume/","keywords":["Newsfeed","viral","Bizarre","Prank","car","onetime"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Ashley Hoffman","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/ashley-hoffman/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-newsfeed/","name":"Newsfeed"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4890760/driverless-car-prank-car-seat-costume/","name":"A Driver Dressed Up as His Car's Seat and People Thought It Was a Driverless Car"}}]}] ```