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.
Between this and the crApple VR thingy on the NYC subway, this makes me wonder for the fate of humanity.
We embrance technology in stupid ways. It’s a thing we always do, It’s pretty hilarious aside from the death part.
When cars were invented, there were no traffic laws, people drove drunk and got in tumbling car wrecks, ran over people constantly. They were much faster than foot, carriage, etc.
When cell phones became affordable, people talked-and-drove so much and wrecks went up.
When texting became popular, people texted and drove and wrecks went up even more.
When smartphones became approachable to the masses, people drive around scrolling web sites rather than driving.
When social video media became popular and usable on mobile broadband, people drive around watching videos rather than driving.
Now VR headset, and on and on.
I see a couple takeaways here: