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Rich26189 writes:
"In a somewhat pre-emptive move Google is lobbying against state legislation that would ban drivers from using Google Glass while driving. I, for one, would like to see such legislation passed. There is enough distracted driving due to hand-held cell phones and Google Glass would just be just one more task for the brain to cope with.
This from Reuters:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/25/us-googl e-glass-lobbying-idUSBREA1O0P920140225"
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Lobbying Against Having Google Glass Banned While Driving
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Wow! Look!! A stray meatball!! Let's interview it!
(Score: 1) by RedBear on Tuesday March 04 2014, @08:46PM
I really shouldn't reply to this and the thread is so old you'll probably never see my reply anyway, but it's going to bug me until I do. The fact that you refer to my part of this discussion as "sanctimonious" certainly reconfirms my opinion of your viewpoint.
First off, you'll notice when I said "main point" when replying to the original poster it was because my first paragraph in that reply was kind of on a tangent to what I mainly wanted to say in my reply to him, namely that between Google Glass and a stationary dashboard in a CONSUMER VEHICLE DRIVEN IN TRAFFIC ON PUBLIC ROADS the much preferable choice would be a stationary dashboard (i.e. "HUD" as he was referring to his Google Glass). Choosing when to take in information from a stationary dashboard which will only ever be displaying information relevant to driving the vehicle is far superior to having a head-mounted display that will show you things, at random times, completely unrelated to the safe driving of the vehicle.
When I say "random", I mean that you have no control over when such notifications will be sent to you. You may choose when to actively read them, but you can't choose when they arrive at your device. I'm not sure how this was misunderstood. I know you think you are immune to the distraction of text messages, but can you really believe you won't be distracted for several seconds when your Google Glass pops up a message saying your wife was critically injured in a car accident across town? If that happens at the wrong time, instead of narrowly avoiding the stupid kid who just ran into the street in front of your car you'll go ahead and plow him down without noticing.
Secondly, I don't feel the constant comparison to custom-designed military HUDs and HMDs makes any sense. I tried to imply this indirectly with previous comments already. Driving a consumer vehicle on public roads among pedestrians and bumper-to-bumper city/freeway traffic cannot be compared to piloting tanks, helicopters and jets which mainly occurs on wide open training ranges or battlefields that have already been cleared of most non-military personnel.
I will grant you the full HUD in a HMD in a military vehicle, but I continue to reject the overall comparison as I did before. The display is still specifically designed to show the pilot only what they need for piloting that vehicle, they are specifically trained for many hours to pilot that vehicle using that specific HMD, and again I am certain there is no military HMD in existence that has an integrated Twitter/SMS feed to let the pilot's civilian buddies send him text messages. Because that would be idiocy of the highest order.
Commercial jet pilots have plenty of time to drink some coffee and read the newspaper while they're on auto-pilot at cruising altitude, with no other planes within miles and the ground three miles below. But would you really want that airline pilot to be wearing his personal Google Glass type device while landing the plane? Think about it. With public road traffic in consumer vehicles, we are ALWAYS "LANDING THE PLANE". An airplane at cruising altitude can fall two miles out of the sky and still end up fine in many circumstances. If you fail to see the car ahead of you slam on the brakes at highway speeds you are dead. Many people drive in such circumstances for an hour or more every damn day!
Thirdly, if we actually cared that much about traffic safety we would indeed isolate the driver from all distractions. But as you say, there is a practical balance between cost and what drivers are willing to put up with. But that isn't saying much. After all, the entire auto industry and nearly every driver on the road rejected the very idea of something as simple and inexpensive as seat belts for decades. Now they are standard and required by law nearly everywhere. I do not buy that checking instrumentation now and then is anywhere on the same level as reading text messages, and reading text messages has nothing to do with driving the vehicle. I'm also not sure how you believe you can read a text message on a HUD without refocusing your eyes (and more importantly BRAIN) away from traffic. That's some magical HUD.
Lastly, even if you can point to traffic statistics showing that the remaining accidents weren't often caused by distractions like texting on phones, that proves nothing regarding something brand new and even more invasive like Google Glass which has only been in the hands of relatively few people for a couple of years. Again, take an objective driving test while being distracted by something like Google Glass and see just how wrong you are about how great a safety tradeoff it is to use such things in traffic, even at low speeds.
My sister was rear-ended pretty good in a turning lane many years ago by some idiot who was just messing with his radio, before texting was even really a thing. Unless you have a copilot to take care of such things, it is my strongly held opinion that all such distractions should be minimized and a driver has no business taking their eyes AND ATTENTION off the road for more than a half-second even if they are on a completely empty road. Reading text messages takes far longer than that, and as everyone gets addicted to needing such constant interactions even while driving and exponentially more messages are sent it becomes statistically more and more likely that they will cause just enough distraction at the wrong moments to cause a statistically meaningful number of accidents that otherwise could have been avoided. I do not consider allowing the reading of texts and tweets while driving to be an acceptable safety tradeoff. Period.
I'm sure a lot of this post will be seen as some kind of moving of goalposts, but I have been consistent with my own viewpoint at all times, even if I didn't successfully communicate that viewpoint from the beginning in a way that you understood. I'll try better next time.
If you're important enough to be texting and making phone calls while driving, then you're obviously important enough to have a chauffeur to drive you while you text and make phone calls. Otherwise get the hell off the road and do such things only when safely parked out of traffic. When you drive a car, you should be DRIVING THE CAR. That is my opinion and I will never be dissuaded from it.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 2) by Angry Jesus on Tuesday March 04 2014, @10:21PM
You wrote "randomly displayed" that's how you were 'misunderstood.'
Your intellectual dishonesty is waaaaay too tedious to even bother reading past that.