US transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg on Monday said human drivers must pay attention at all times after videos emerged of people wearing what appeared to be Apple’s recently released Vision Pro headset while driving Teslas.
Buttigieg responded on Twitter/X to a video that had more than 24m views of a Tesla driver who appeared to be gesturing with his hands to manipulate a virtual reality field.
Despite their names, Tesla’s assisted driving features – Autopilot, Enhanced Autopilot and Full Self-Driving – do not mean the vehicles are fully autonomous, Buttigieg said Monday on social media.
“Reminder – ALL advanced driver assistance systems available today require the human driver to be in control and fully engaged in the driving task at all times,” Buttigieg said.
I know with the Apple headset you can be in a “world” where you can still see you surroundings. Its a video feed of your surroundings so obviously you would not want to drive while doing it and I don’t know the range. But maybe what they were trying to do is have a small screen with a video or to be charitable, Apple maps open in a corner of their vision while still having a full view of the world.
Again, I’m not saying I trust the technology for this purpose but having your GPS directions, semi transparent on a HUD would be really cool.
The video is staged and that’s the beginning and end of my point. I’m not trying to argue about whether the technology is cool or terrible. I’m saying the video is staged.