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.

  • Mahonia@lemmy.world
    21·
    9 months ago

    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.

    • anivia@lemmy.ml
      8·
      9 months ago

      It seems unlikely that we will have fully self-driving cars soon

      Maybe not from Tesla, but Mercedes already sells 2 cars which have limited Level 3 self driving functionality. Up to 50 mph you are legally allowed to divert your attention from the road and do something else, you just need to be ready to take back control within 10 seconds of the car telling you to do so. Mercedes is so confident in that system that they are taking legal liability for any crashes caused while the car is in self driving mode. And Mercedes is already planning to get the car certified for speeds up to 75mph soon, so it will be usable at regular highway speeds

        • anivia@lemmy.ml
          42·
          9 months ago

          Well, so far these cars have driven a lot of miles without crashes. They don’t need to be perfect, they just need to be better than a human driver, which is not a very high bar to set

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
      3·
      9 months ago

      You are of course correct but the problem is that Tesla are irresponsible, shocking I know.

      All the other car companies are holding back their self-driving tech until it actually 100% works, but Tesla are like, nah we’re going to use our customers as bata testers. So what if they die they’ve already bought the car.