People forget just how much force is behind a vehicle moving at the speed limit.
I think, I THINK, that maybe we can respect the value of a human life enough to put down our computers while we drive.
1. Spend a month in an accident recovery unit, seeing first hand victims of MVAs.
2. Be in a crash. Somehow this would have to be simulated, at a speed that won't cause injury, but will shock. (I was in a simulated 15mph crash at a fair - it HURT!)
On the day I applied for my license, I visited my dad at the hospital and the guy next to him had a smashed face from a car accident. He had been in a car with a friend, who was driving, and his teenage girlfriend, who was pregnant. The girlfriend's baby died and it was considered unlikely that the girl would survive. The driver went mostly unharmed and was understandably very upset.
I swore that day to always remind myself of this before I get into a car. I used to, but now I don't. The impression fades.
I walked out of it unscathed, but was a kid made of rubber. Dare say these days I'd have smashed ribs and so-forth from the same - at the least.
Imho it's less distracting to use GPS on Glass, than have to look down and off the road to find it.
EDIT: I don't want to come off as anti-tech in cars. I definitely believe that tech can enhance road safety, although I'm more looking forward to driverless cars. I do think that Glass is more distracting than normal GPS devices because Glass has the capability to do so much more than GPS. I don't totally trust people to only use the GPS function in Glass.
http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/d12/vc27602.htm
But the Glass is more than a GPS. It lets you read texts and emails. Reading texts and emails while you're driving will necessarily be more distracting than not doing so. And that's what's not allowed.
The law is written such that it's only allowed to be able to offer both an approved function as well as an entertainment/business function if there's an interlock that prevents anything but the approved functions from being used while the vehicle is in motion.
Should be easy enough to arrange. Also, implement a time readout for "current GPS Nav session" so the officer can verify there was no funny business going on.
I think I'd prefer everyone being technologically conservative with respect to driver distraction. Until something can be shown to not be a dangerous distractions, drivers can't have it. When we ban things after they prove to be a distraction, that usually means we proved them a distraction via a body count. Waiting for a hundred or a thousand people to die so that you have statistical certainty is the shittiest kind of science.
This is a bit of a catch-22, because we're pretty piss-poor at proving the negative, that things aren't a distraction. We're still way more paranoid about electronics on an airplane than most people think we need to be.
What should happen -- in my opinion, and for all I know what does happen in some situations -- is a series of trials. First, laboratory, simulation-based trials. If drivers in a simulation are distracted by a new gizmo -- GPS, dash-mounted phone, Glass, car console, whatever -- we can eliminate it there, with zero people dying. Then and only then, if we have reason to believe no one will die because of it, we can have real-world trials, followed by approval for the general population.
Obviously, this would suck for early Glass adopters, since it would likely take a year plus to complete good trials, but you could approve broad classes of devices and fast-track similar devices in the future.
I don't know. You make this sound really bad, but isn't this how a lot of science works? How do we know if a medical treatment doesn't have disasterous side effects? Sure, we start by assuming it's safe, and maybe we test on animals to gain some confidence, but at the end of the day you can't really be sure until people have tried the treatment.
Obviously, there are other safer ways to study whether things distract drivers. Perhaps we could use driving simulators to test reaction time. I probably should have worded my comment differently, and asked for proof that Google Glass makes drivers quantifiably more distracted or less reactive rather than asking directly for proof of a higher accident rate.
It's pretty clear that people who justify this are doing so because they don't think it's unsafe. You may disagree, and that's fine, but realize that they disagree with you, and do not see it as a safety issue.
If you don't think it's unsafe, how would awareness of car accidents or respect for human life affect anything? You're aiming at the wrong idea.
The people in the latter group can be proven wrong objectively by data that shows accidents that occur as a result of texting while driving, whereas the former group is irrelevant because they are simply ignorant.
There is currently no data or at least not enough data to support the conclusion that simply wearing a Google glass (which does not imply use in the same way that holding up a cell phone while driving does) causes accidents.
If the device eventually can improve the "task at hand" when driving then _the police_ is the one increasing risks by punishing people with wearable technology.
The burden would be on the maker to ensure that.
Otherwise, it maybe could allow for safer driving, but it sure would allow reckless facebook/driving.
What if is way more safe to use your voice than your hands to communicate? (and some people is going to do it anyway despite laws against texting while driving)
What if is way faster to change your eye-focus than to move your eyes and head to see the GPS?
Many of you guys commenting here are acting like this thing is black-and-white when is clearly not.
If X requires your attention, it will cause accidents. We already have enough data on that.
I really wish the direct approach to the law could work so that this technology could evolve at its normal pace. What's the issue we're trying to solve? Unnecessary injury/property damage due to distracted driving. What should the law be? Enforce a severe punishment for drivers who cause personal injury or property damage while driving distracted. Oh, you were typing a text message when you ran over that pedestrian? Well we're going to drain your personal assets first, perhaps garnish your wages, and then if and only if those assets don't cover the damages your insurance will start to kick in. Oh, the pedestrian died due to your provable distractedness? You're going to prison.
But again, I realize that's very ideal and won't work in the real world. Negligence doesn't respond to punishment in the same way as crimes which require the perpetrator to make an active decision to forego their morals. Negligence is by definition passive. It's the act of not doing. You could argue that device-induce distracted driving is a more active form of negligence, but the psychology behind the way beeps and buzzes control our lives is weird. Want to cut ahead of a long line when all you need to do is ask someone a question? Look up the phone number for the person sitting behind the desk and call them. Nine times out of ten they'll answer (protip to students: this is a really good way to hack your university's registration office). Logic is completely suspended when Pavlov's bell rings.
That's enough.