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Lawmakers Seek To Ban Google Glass On the Road
An anonymous reader writes in with news about a West Virginia bill that would prohibit drivers from "using a wearable computer with head mounted display." Republican Gary G. Howell sponsored the bill in reaction to reading an article on Google Glass and said: "I actually like the idea of the product and I believe it is the future, but last legislature we worked long and hard on a no-texting-and-driving law. It is mostly the young that are the tech-savvy that try new things. They are also our most vulnerable and underskilled drivers. We heard of many crashes caused by texting and driving, most involving our youngest drivers. I see the Google Glass as an extension."
And if I want to use the GPS feature only while driving? I think the best solution would be for Google to add a "lockout" feature, where GPS is the only feature accessible when the speed of the glasses is in excess of some reasonable number. Users could enable or disable this mode, as I can with my normal GPS unit, for the cases where the device is being used by the passenger instead of the driver. Then it falls under a blanket "distracted driving" laws when used inappropriately but is still allowable when used appropriately.
- W. Blaine Dowler
http://www.bureau42.com
But technically I could run a app that is beneficial to my driving. This week end rented a car and got one with a HUD. It displayed three things, the speed limit, the current speed and the navigation instructions. It "floated" over the hood and I could read the information without taking my eyes off the street. This is VERY beneficial when you are currently doing a maneuver in heavy traffic. It also made the audio queues obsolete. (It had none.) Oh and this implementation of a speed limit indicator works, you see your speed and the speed limit all the time. You really have to willfully be speeding, you can't speed "by mistake".
The only thing the Google glasses need are a driving mode.
HUDs on cars currently are also less intrusive and only take up 5-10% of your viewing area. Google Glass will probably cause people to focus on the road differently just like when you hold your phone to your head it causes you to lose mental focus.