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Vision Pro users: Videos from everyday situations fill social media
Photo: Angela Weiss / AFP
The US Department of Transportation has responded to video footage of Tesla drivers wearing Apple's new computer glasses with an urgent warning. "Reminder: ALL advanced driving assistance systems available today require that the driver maintain control at all times," wrote Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on X (formerly Twitter) on Monday.
In the past few days, several videos have appeared online of people driving with Apple glasses and without their hands on the steering wheel. The clip that Buttigieg was explicitly referring to was uploaded to X several times and flushed onto users' timelines millions of times. It shows a person behind the wheel of a Tesla Cybertruck, wearing the Vision Pro while driving and appearing to operate the headset with hand gestures.
According to local media, the video was shot in Utah and first shared on Instagram. The account owner later clarified that it was a joke: The Vision Pro only showed the road and the Tesla's self-driving function was not activated. But even if that were true, the person would not have had their hands on the steering wheel, at least for a short time, and would only have seen the road indirectly through the Vision Pro's camera recording.
The Apple Vision Pro has only been on the market since Friday. The headset has cameras that can capture the environment and transmit it to displays in front of your eyes. Apple emphasizes in its usage rules that you are not allowed to drive a vehicle with the glasses.
The “Autopilot” driving assistance system in Tesla electric cars can, among other things, maintain the speed, lane and distance to the vehicle in front. Tesla itself emphasizes that the system does not turn the cars into self-driving cars. However, there were always cases in which drivers relied too much on the technology.
Meanwhile, videos are circulating on social media that show people with the Vision Pro in all sorts of more or less everyday situations: in the swimming pool, shopping in the supermarket - or walking the robot dog.
pbe/dpa