US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Monday said human drivers must pay attention at all times after videos emerged of people driving Teslas while wearing what appeared to be Apple’s recently released Vision Pro headset.

Buttigieg responded on X to a video that had more than 24 million views of a Tesla driver who appeared to be gesturing with his hands to manipulate a virtual reality field.

A driver was spotted behind the wheel of a Tesla CyberTruck, engaging with an Apple Vision Pro mixed reality headset . Is this safe?? pic.twitter.com/DL7PwVabBw

— Githii (@githii) February 4, 2024

“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.

Apple’s Vision Pro was released last week and blends three-dimensional digital content with a view of the outside world. Apple, which says people should never use it while operating a moving vehicle, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tesla did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Buttigieg has made similar comments previously about the use of Tesla Autopilot. Tesla says its advanced driver features are intended for use with a fully attentive driver “who has their hands on the wheel and is prepared to take over at any moment.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

The Uttarakhand Assembly will take up the final draft of the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) today, days after it was approved by the state cabinet.

If the bill is passed and the law gets implemented, Uttarakhand will become the first state in the country after Independence to adopt the Uniform Civil Code, with several other BJP-ruled states – including Assam and Madhya Pradesh – expressing interest in bringing in a similar law. Goa has had a common civil code since it was under Portuguese rule.

UCC refers to a common set of laws that are applicable to all the citizens of India and is not based on religion in dealing with marriage, divorce, inheritance, and adoption, among other personal matters.

In the draft bill that Uttarakhand will present in the assembly, the government seeks a complete ban on polygamy, sources said. There is a also a provision for live-in couples to register their relationship.

The sources said the recommendations also say that everyone will get adoption rights. Sources also said that the bill, if cleared, will instate equal inheritance rights for both the son and daughter.

In June last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had made a big push for a Uniform Civil Code and said the country couldn’t run on two laws, much like it didn’t work to have “different set of rules for different members of a family”.

The draft was prepared earlier this year by a committee set up by Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami. The committee worked with a cross-section of citizens and spoke to more than 2 lakh people and key stakeholders.

A Uniform Civil Code for Uttarakhand was a major election promise by Mr Dhami in the 2022 assembly polls.

The Chief Minister hopes that many states would follow the example of Uttarakhand and use the template provided by the state to implement the UCC.

The Uttarakhand Assembly will introduce legislation on the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) in the state Assembly today. Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami, at the forefront of this move, said on Monday that the proposed UCC will not only be “for the good of all sections” but also align with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of ‘Sab ka Saath, Sab ka Vikas’ and ‘Ek Bharat, Sreshtha Bharat.’

A government-appointed panel, led by retired Supreme Court judge Ranjana Prakash Desai, has drafted a four-volume, 749-page report containing several recommendations. The panel collected 2.33 lakh pieces of written feedback online and organised more than 70 public forums. During these meetings, panel members engaged with roughly 60,000 people to help develop the draft.

Among the many proposals in the UCC are a complete ban on polygamy and child marriage, a standardised marriageable age for girls across all faiths, and a uniform process for divorce. These recommendations, aimed at fostering gender equality and social cohesion, are set to be deliberated upon during the special four-day assembly session which began yesterday and will continue till Thursday.

READ | Uttarakhand Cabinet Approves Uniform Civil Code Draft On Eve Of Assembly Session

The UCC draft encompasses various facets of civil life, with recommendations extending to inheritance rights, mandatory marriage registration, and an increased marriageable age for girls, facilitating their pursuit of education before marriage. Additionally, couples failing to register their marriages will be ineligible for government facilities, in what is being seen as a push for legal documentation.

While the specifics of the draft remain undisclosed to the public, reports suggest that it will establish a legal framework encompassing marriage, divorce, land, property, and inheritance laws, irrespective of religious affiliations. If enacted, Uttarakhand will become the first state in post-Independence India to adopt the UCC, following in the footsteps of Goa, where it has been operational since the days of Portuguese rule.

The proposed UCC for Uttarakhand goes beyond religious boundaries, granting adoption rights to everyone, including Muslim women. It seeks to ban practices such as halala and iddat (Islamic practices a woman must go through after a divorce or the death of the husband), promote the declaration of live-in relationships, and simplify adoption procedures. 

The practice of iddat has been at the centre of Pakistan politics recently, with its jailed former prime minister Imran Khan’s wife Bushra Khan accused of not completing the waiting period after divorcing her previous husband and marrying Khan in 2018.

Once the proposed UCC is in place, live-in relationships will have to be registered under law. Legal experts claim that registration of such relationships would benefit both men and women. 

“False cases registered by women would also come down. Legal sanctity would now be there in such cases,” former DGP of Uttarakhand Ashok Kumar told NDTV.  

The draft excludes population control measures and the Scheduled Tribes, constituting 3 per cent of Uttarakhand’s population.

Other key features of the UCC include equal property rights for sons and daughters, elimination of distinctions between legitimate and illegitimate children, and equal treatment for adopted and biologically born children. In the event of a person’s death, the proposed UCC ensures equal property rights for the spouse, children, and parents, a departure from previous laws that limited such rights.