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.
The new headsets show you the world around you and add an interface layer, like a HUD except the whole thing is on screen. You can walk around and still see in front of you, while your email interface floats off to the left. You interact with the interface through eye and hand motions.
I haven’t used it, but that’s what they claim it can do. It would not be impossible to do the things people are doing in the video.
Existing headsets also do this (not with integrated email but that’s not the point). I know because trying it walking around my house made me the sickest I’ve ever been using VR. It shocks me the number of people who insist this is real and either haven’t seen the video or haven’t used VR.
This was staged. Will some idiots do it for real? Probably, if they can (sometime else said apple headsets shut down while in motion, so that would be another reason this was staged).
But the number of people downvoting me for saying the video everyone is talking about is faked honestly has me flummoxed. It’s fucking obviously fake, just like the tide pod challenge.
You know with VR you get less motion sick eventually, they call it your “VR Legs” kind of like being on a boat or something like that.
That doesn’t mean this wasn’t staged.