Taking Off Your Vision Pro While Driving Isn’t Just a Good Idea — It’s the Law

We probably should have seen it coming, but it took less than 12 hours after Apple’s spatial computing headset launched on Friday morning before the first installment of “stupid tricks to do with your Vision Pro” debuted.

Even though Apple notes in several places that you should “never use Apple Vision Pro while operating a moving vehicle,” you just know that someone was going to try it — and document the experience for posterity.

While he may not have been the first one to try this, a fellow by the name of Dante Lentini decided to strap on Apple’s headset while driving his Tesla, sharing a short video on X (the social network formerly known as Twitter) that also made it look like he got pulled over and arrested by the cops for his trouble.

However, despite the video showing two police cruisers pulling up behind him with lights on, Lentini later came clean, telling Gizmodo that it was merely a “skit” that he made with some friends and that he wasn’t actually arrested. Instead, he just happened to be “in the right place at the right time” to catch a shot of some cops on unrelated duties to make it look like they were coming for him.

Unsurprisingly, Lentini’s X post gained some “context” added by readers, with links to Apple’s support articles and laws related to distracted driving that all point out how bad of an idea this is — and they’re right.

In its article, How to safely use your Apple Vision Pro, Apple spells it out in clear terms, and that’s not the only place.

Never use the device while operating a moving vehicle, bicycle, heavy machinery, or in any other situations requiring attention to safety.

However, in case that’s not clear enough, US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has weighed in on X to remind folks that there are no true self-driving cars on the roads today after another video of someone wearing a Vision Pro behind the wheel of a moving Tesla Cybertruck went viral online.

While Buttigieg didn’t call out the Vision Pro specifically, it’s evident that’s what the driver in the video was wearing. It also seems he may have assumed the Cybertruck, being made by Tesla, had some sort of driver assistance system. However, the scary part is that it doesn’t.

Assuming that the video of the headset-wearing Cybertruck driver wasn’t entirely staged (which seems more likely), this makes the scenario even more severe since the person can clearly be seen using their hands to manipulate apps and other virtual objects on the Vision Pro, rather than keeping their hands on the wheel. We’ll have to assume they were steering with their knees.

However, that’s the other problem with wearing a Vision Pro while you need your hands for other things. The user interface is manipulated through virtual swipe and pinch gestures, which means you might as well be tapping on an iPhone or iPad. The driver of the Cybertruck was apparently distracted enough as they were gesticulating that they didn’t notice they were being filmed.

Ultimately, though, it doesn’t matter whether you’re wearing a Vision Pro or eating a Big Mac — Level 2 Advanced Driver Automation Systems (ADAS) require that you keep your eyes on the road and your hands on the wheel. Tesla has yet to move beyond Level 2 — although its ambitious “Full Self Driving” (FSD) marketing has given many people the wrong idea about what it’s capable of — and even Apple is reportedly scrapping its plans for a fully autonomous Apple Car in favor of a similar “Level 2+” system.