Transportation head says drivers must pay attention at all times after clips emerge of some using what looks like Apple’s Vision Pro
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.
A lot of the people that drive these things are acting like children in adult bodies. I have seen some wildly dumb shit happen. It's like the car company created by the Darwin Awards...
I literally once saw someone eating on a little folding table/desk of some sort in their Tesla (driver seat, of course) with the dash screen playing some sort of media.
Another time, the person was playing a handheld gaming console of some sort, in the driver seat.
An the automatic lane switching doesn't adjust for people speeding up in the passing lane well. I've seen a couple near accidents there.
People have always been idiots behind the wheel. I started driving before personal electronics and touchscreens were a thing. You still saw people bracing books or newspapers against the steering wheel with their thumbs so they could read as they drove down the highway. Now it’s watching movies, texting or other social media, video conversations, reading…
Just seems that there are way more people doing it. The social contract gets more broken every day.
“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.
This is not entirely true anymore. If you're in a 2024 Mercedes EQS Sedan driving in Nevada (Edit: or California) at less than 40 mph, you are allowed to take your hands off the wheel and your eyes off the road.
This is one of the things about assisted driving tech that's always confused me. It seems unlikely that we will have fully self-driving cars soon, but the illusion of being able to be absent while driving seems really dangerous. It doesn't seem like an improvement to me to remove the human element from most of the driving tasks while also requiring that human to spring into action seemingly at random.
Like don't get me wrong, people do dumb shit on the road with or without assistance, but having a system that requires human involvement at a zero-to-hero level seems like a bad system.
Then again, based on this actual content, maybe people just shouldn't be allowed to own vehicles full stop.
It's Fred. Don't worry about him at all, he's really good on speed runs up and down the 5fwy. He always gets home with extra tokens and a good 5000 points.
There's no way that isn't satire or similar commentary. Problem is I suspect way too many people are too dumb to get it. People who don't realize it's a faked scenario and are dumb enough to try it.
Edit: Jesus Christ it's fake. Have you downvoters even seen the video? Guy gets or of the car and is beep booping around? That motherfucker would be blind and couldn't walk around without falling. If he was in pass thru he'd be vommiting because there's no faster way to make yourself sick. The video isn't even possible without being staged.
The way people go on about critical thinking, I really expected you all to be a lot more savvy about things like this.