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Google Glass User Fights Speeding Ticket, Saying She's Defending the Future
Nerval's Lobster writes "A California software developer dubbed an explorer by Google and a scofflaw by the California Highway Patrol appeared in court to fight over the purpose and usage of wearable electronics. Cecilia Abadie denies she was doing 80 mph in a 65 mph zone when she was pulled over by the CHP Oct. 29 of last year, but proudly admits wearing her early edition of Google's Google Glass augmented-reality goggles. She just doesn't agree with the CHP's contention that Google Glass is a television. Abadie, who works at virtual-reality sports software developer Full Swing Golf and was one of the first 'explorers' chosen by Google as early testers of Google Glass before they were released, wears the goggles for as long as 12 hours per day, using them both as a way to pull email, driving directions and other information into her view and to push pictures, Tweets, updates and other information out to professional and social networks in a process she describes as 'living in transparency.' The California Highway Patrol, unfortunately for Abadie, considered wearing Google Glass to be the same as watching television while driving. One of the two citations Abadie was given was for speeding; the other was for 'driving with a monitor visible in violation of California Vehicle Code 27602.' Fighting that perception in court is 'a big responsibility for me and also for the judge who is going to interpret a very old law compared with how fast technology is changing,' Abadie told the Associated Press for a Jan. 16 story." A court commissioner in San Diego dismissed the Google Glass ticket, saying he could find no evidence that the device was in use while Abadie was driving.
glasshole.
Where is moderation: -1 False?
If you are using Google Glass while driving, you ARE distracted. There is no guess work or assumptions here. If the device is OFF, then you might as well take it off, and then there would be no problem.
As a resident of San Diego, I hope to goodness that I don't run into her... or to be more literal, that she doesn't physically run into me or anyone in my family.
To weasel out of an everyday traffic ticket is one thing... but to say that she's "defending the future" is an affront to the public servants and to regular drivers and citizens who are just trying to make our roads safe.
At 80mph, you travel over 117 feet *per second*. (She may have denied it, but I'm pretty sure the cop was right and that she was going 80, or at least close to it — this is San Diego, and pretty much everyone drives at around 75 - 80). Using Glass, it's very easy and conceivable to focus on the image for a second or two. You could almost clear an entire football field in that amount of time.
While there may be marginal gains of utility and efficiency by using a product like Google Glass while driving, I am very hard pressed to hear that it would actually make anyone safer... and of course, time will likely show that products like this (just like with cell phone use and texting) will actually make drivers less aware of the road, and thus, more dangerous and more prone to accidents.
At some point, we need to just label "idiotic" for what it is, and admit that some "causes" are just that.
Isn't that like saying a pilot is distracted by having his HUD turned on?
Pilots are trained to use Huds.
A google glass user assumes they are trained, because their ego is bigger than anyone around them.
A San Diego court commissioner dismissed a traffic ticket on Thursday against a California woman who drove with Google Glass, a tiny computer mounted on an eyeglass frame. Court Commissioner John Blair said he was dismissing the citation against Cecilia Abadie on the grounds there was no proof her Google Glass was operating when she was pulled over in October by a California Highway Patrol officer
If she can show me that her Google Glasses provided information that is vital or at the very least helpful to driving a car instead of, at best, a distraction, we can talk.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
As someone who used to work on Heads-Up Displays, I can tell you that there is a vast difference between the two.
First off, aircraft don't follow each other in the sky at distances of around 3 airplane-lengths apart. They also aren't confined to just two dimensions. Outside of ATC control zones, they don't have speed limits. Pilots in aircraft with HUDs are highly-trained (think very-high-end commercial jets, fighter jets, etc.) The HUD is specifically built and engineered to assist the pilot, and nothing else. Finally, unless it's a fighter jet, the HUD doesn't swallow the entire pilot's field-of-view. HUD gear is certified by the FAA before use on a given model/type of aircraft.
Notice that Google Glass on some douchebag's face while driving his/her car is the polar fucking opposite of all these things. :/
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
And truth be told, the sooner HUDs are moved into the driving experience, the better. It's just that at certain speeds particular features should likely be disabled.
Holy shit! This is awful! Do you KNOW what she's DONE?
She made me look at a Google+ page! There are things you just cannot unsee.
Wouldn't it be the prosecution's duty to show that it wasn't?
Given a choice between the driver looking at the GPS or seeing it on a HUD, the latter seems safer.
Silicon Valley used to be a truly remarkable place. It was where industry and the future truly did collide head-on. And because of this, great things happened there.
Hewlett-Packard. Fairchild Semiconductor. Xerox PARC. Intel. Sun Microsystems. Cisco Systems.
Those were the kind of names we came to associate with very advanced technological achievement. They earned our respect with the tremendous advances they made.
But then something happened. Silicon Valley ceased to be about a productive, beneficial future. It became about a shitty, rotten future. It became about "social media". It became about advertising. It became about a disturbing level of data collection and mining.
The Silicon Valley of today is a mere shell of what it once was. Clad in fedora hats and rampant hipsterism, Silicon Valley of today is a sissified, degenerate place. Gone are the real scientists and engineers who advanced technology for all of mankind. Gone are their advances. Gone are the hope they brought.
I weep for Silicon Valley. It truly does make me quite distraught to think about what has happened to it. One of the greatest intellectual creations ever to existed has been crushed by men who wear tight jeans and glasses without lenses. It has been dragged through the mud by overweight, unshaven manchildren wearing stained shirts with shitty Japanese drawings on them. It has been shit upon repeatedly by self-styled "entrepreneurs" and "engineers" whose only talent is unjustifiable self promotion.
It is too late to save Silicon Valley. But other technologically-inclined regions should take note of what happened there. Keep away the hipsters. Keep away the bearded manchildren. Keep away the "entrepreneurs" and "engineers" who spew forth about Ruby on Rails. These people are an infection, and this infection will destroy even the most robust of technological and industrial communities. Do not let them ruin your community like they ruined Silicon Valley's.
Isn't that like saying a pilot is distracted by having his HUD turned on?
Does a pilot's HUD send and receive display SMS messages? Facebook updates? Twitter feeds? Does it answer inane trivia that you ask it like "How long is the average intestine?" or "What's the word for chicken in chinese?" If you ask a pilot's hud to show you a funny lol-cat will it?
Or does it just show you highly flying relevant info graphics and information like the horizon, airspeed, altitude, rate of descent...?
Yeah, they are totally the same thing, right?
I would of been more impressed if she used the google glasses to prove she wasn't speeding.
Be seeing you...
Were you using a distracting device? Yes.
Were you speeding? Yes.
Are you now wasting MY tax money and the courts time? Yes.
Throw the bitch in jail for a month. I don't mind paying for THAT.
You are not 'defending the future' you are defending being a self absorbed twat. And *I* don't want you to win and cause more of that.
Personally i'd ban the use of cellphones while the car is in motion. Most of them now have accelerometers. Use it. Disable the phone if the car is moving.
Less distracted morons on the road is good for everyone. Oh you're a passenger? We'll have passenger mode.
Get caught driving with your phone in passenger mode? $10,000 fine and a month in jail.
We'll put a stop to driving while distracted real quick. At least for phones. Is it perfect? Nope. But it's a good start.
Letting people be the cause of 30,000 deaths on the road per year because you don't want to infringe their 'rights' is bullshit. We stripped away more rights for 3000 deaths on 9-11. If we're going to keep losing rights. Lets at least put their loss to some use that actually prevents deaths.