Rivian Unveils Custom Silicon, R2 Lidar Roadmap, and Universal Hands Free

Where I live I am often surrounded by Waymo vehicles... is Lidar 100% safe for people to be around? I ask because I read an article about how Lidar on one of the new Volvos could destroy your phone camera if you pointed it at it? If Lidar can do that to a phone camera, can it hurt your eyes?

The existing regulations here might be insufficient. There is definitely risk if the devices are not carefully designed to be safe.

To date I can't think of any existing lasers which you are intended to look at during daily use. Most consumer facing lasers are either class 1 but hidden (CD-ROM), or class 2 but basically not shined into your eye (barcode reader).

There was another discussion a week back https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46126780

The lack of accessible certification/testing docs for the lidars is also worrying. Where is the proof that it was even tested? Was it tested just via simulation, via a dummy eye stand-in, or with a real biological substitute?

What if there are biological concerns other than simply peak power involved with shining NIR into the eye? (For instance, it seems deep red light has some (beneficial) biological effects on mitochondria. How do we know that a pulsed NIR laser won't have similar but negative effects, even if it doesn't burn a hole in your retina.)