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In UK, Google Glass To Be Banned While Driving
RockDoctor writes "Stuff magazine, a gadget oriented mag, is reporting that the UK's Department for Transport is planning to ban drivers from using Google Glass, using the same law (1988 Road Traffic Act) that is used to ban drivers from using hand-held mobile phones. While there are obvious parallels between the distraction potential of the mobile phone and of Glass, there are arguments in the other direction that the speech-control aspects of Glass could make it less distracting than, say, a touch-screen SatNav. So, to ban Glass while driving or not? Typical fines for using a mobile phone while driving are £60 cash plus three penalty points on the driving license; the points expire three years after the offence and if you accumulate 12 points then you've lost your license. Repeat offenders may experience higher fines and/ or more points. Around a million people have received the penalty since the mobile phone ban was introduced in 2003."
The most important thing in driving is to be alert. Anything that focuses your attention prevents you from being alert. It doesn't matter if the thing you are staring at is the road, the car in front of you, your phone, your gauges, or anything else. It all reduces alertness.
GG is not some piece of magic. It WILL focus your attention.
Hands free technologies are not less distracting; in some cases, they're the worst. The cell phone lobby is desperately trying to focus on "hands free" stuff to sidetrack the issue.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/29/AR2010012900053.html
http://money.cnn.com/2013/06/12/autos/aaa-voice-to-text/index.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/even-hands-free-you-shouldnt-talk-or-text-while-driving/2013/07/29/4d7214ec-f3d0-11e2-aa2e-4088616498b4_story.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/24/opinion/hands-free-distractions.html?_r=0 ...and on and on, if you just google things like "hands free driving distracting"
Having your hands on the wheel simply increases your control of the car. It does not do ANYTHING about your brain being more preoccupied with the conversation or task.
Your job in your car is to DRIVE. Not to eat, not to put on makeup or comb your hair, not to text, not to read, not to talk to someone who isn't in the car. You're piloting 2-3 tons of metal that can and do injure, maim, and kill. People driving cars kill 30,000+ a year in the US alone. Take the responsibility seriously and stop faffing about trying to carry on your life in your car. If you need to get things done while traveling, RIDE THE BUS.
Please help metamoderate.
That article (and many other half-baked clips that were popular earlier this year) was based on a very weak report by AAA. Weak because it relied upon self-reporting, rather than accident report statistics.
The more I read into it, it's just a mess. Graphs correlating phone use with internet use (no bearing on safety?), alcohol use during the last year with phone use during the last month, and importantly, correlates the frequency of car crashes over two years with cell phone use over one month. In that point, which should have been their most relevant, it even showed no statistical difference between the self-reported phone use of "once/rarely" and "often/regularly."
Here is a link to the primary source.
It's always confirmation bias!
Most of these suggestions for 'improving' driving seem to come from quite crappy drivers. I include you in that category because you use the phrase '... focus on anything but the road'. WRONG! You are not supposed to be 'focused' on ANYTHING, including 'the road'. You are supposed to be ALERT. Your eyes are supposed to be constantly moving, look at the road, look at the car in front of you, look in front of that car, look in your mirrors, look at your gauges, look to at the sides, look off in the distance. ANYTHING that encourages (or allows) you to focus on ANYTHING, including the road, is a detriment to good driving, not an aid.
Focusing on the road is called (or used to be) highway hypnosis. You are nicely focused, convinced that everything is OK (after all, if it wasn't OK my wonderful gadgets would tell me), and you are as dangerous as if you were just about asleep.
The FEAR is not 'fear of the new', it is both the combined experience of the past (ie texting and cell phones), and the fear that these gadgets would cause crappy drivers to somehow think they are now better. Neither one of those is good.