Do you know who aren’t massive fans of you using a phone in your car? The police.
Turns out they probably won’t like it if you use an Apple Vision Pro while driving either.
Over the weekend, one Apple Vision Pro owner went viral for wearing their headset while driving. Even though they claimed it was fake the moment they received any kind of rightful kickback, it turns out that not only were they doing something incredibly stupid, but illegal too.
When Gizmodo reached out to the creator of the video, 21-year-old Dante Lentini, he told them that the video was a ‘skit’, and that he and his cameraman intentionally misled viewers about being in any kind of legal trouble. Instead, the two parts of the video were filmed separately — the bit with the police being filmed as officers drove by in a parking lot. “In the right place at the right time”, Lentini explains.
After this video gained significant attention on X (now sitting at over 20m views), Dante claimed to Gizmodo that he only used the headset for 30-40 seconds while driving.
Not worth the clout — iMore’s take
Despite claiming to only use it for half a minute, we can’t verify the truth of this claim and Dante repeatedly deleting replies and tweets overnight (according to Gizmodo) seems to suggest some dishonesty here.
Even if this is true and he only used the headset for that long, this is still very dangerous. Tesla support specifically claims that users should keep “hands on the steering wheel at all times and maintain control of your vehicle”. In an emergency, you can be given control at any moment and the big Apple headset in the way is a significant obstruction to view. Apple itself warns users to "Never use Apple Vision Pro while operating a moving vehicle, bicycle, heavy machinery, or in any other situations requiring attention to safety."
Where a phone (which is also dangerous to use while driving) is a small screen that draws your attention off the road, a Vision Pro pumps a narrower field of view into your eye line so that you miss vital information about surrounding traffic in your peripheral vision. The passthrough cameras, while clear, will never give you a true picture of what’s happening around you, and, when moving, the only thing you’ll be able to see is a massive popup that says it has lost tracking. At worst, the headset might switch off — and then you'll see nothing but blank screens.
Even if Dante’s claims are true and he only used the headset for 30-40 seconds while driving, he endangered himself, his cameraman, and other road users for a quick internet video. This is not something that any Vision Pro user should be mimicking.
Think different. #applevisionpro pic.twitter.com/dEALUsntS8February 2, 2024
