Glass could potentially make us better drivers. One of the use cases we've looked at is wiring Glass up to alert drivers when someone is in their blind spot or someone is coming up too quickly behind them.
This citation is bogus. It's safer to look at Glass for directions than my nav system, but you wont see me get ticketed for looking at my nav system.
Glass is an entertainment device, just because it is HUD does not invalidate it having an audio visual feedback, complete with a camera. It is made for consumption, on a small and more personal scale.
Glass could potentially make us worse drivers too. Satnav systems have guidelines issued for usage. Here, we are dealing with illumination directly 2 inch in front of my eye. I will go by your data, but would rather want California DMV to test it out comprehensively.
> Glass is an entertainment device, just because it is HUD does not invalidate it having an audio visual feedback, complete with a camera. It is made for consumption, on a small and more personal scale.
"Consumption" != "entertainment".
A navigation system is made for consuming content, too.
'Take a photo and upload it to my social network' is an entertainment device. Sure, you could construct an argument around professional photographers blah blah, but the camera is not professional quality, and from experience, there's no way to frame the photo properly. The glass is almost entirely an entertainment device in its current form.
I agree on general grounds that the Glass is mostly for entertainment, but you argument is not a good one. That a device is not optimal for a particular kind of photography doesn't preclude someone from using it for photography artistically or professionally. Using "crappy" cameras can conceivably add to the photo; using the Glass for photo is no less valid than filming a movie with a black and white camera even though we have color cameras.
My argument that it's "not a professional photographer's tool blah blah" was intended to prevent exactly what you have just said. Yes, you can make a baroque, twisted set of circumstances in which the item might be made use of in a professional manner, but that's not how it's going to be used.
You could say the same thing of a craft knife: it's not a surgical tool. Sure, in a very particular set of circumstances, a surgeon will use one, but that's 'blah blah'. It's not the way the items is used by the vast bulk of its users.
Heads up displays have already been proven by the military to be much safer. They try to reduce "heads down" time for the pilots looking at their instruments as much as possible.
If you compare a GPS unit the user has to turn their head or worse look down to use vs. a Glass sitting above their vision with the directions always available at a glance, the Glass is pretty clearly superior. Realistically, many users use their phones for GPS and don't have a proper mount whereas Glass will always be properly mounted to be hands free, so it's probably even safer than the most common thing of just using your phone for directions.
Slight correction - a properly designed HUD is safer, in aircraft.
Aircraft are not cars - watching for other aircraft is typically handled by air traffic controllers for most aircraft that will have HUDs, or the HUDs are capable of displaying the locations of other aircraft.
Google Glass interfaces are not designed to be HUDs to be used when driving, and there is no ATC or automatic detection of other vehicles when you're in a car.
sure, but are you implying that taking your eyes off the road to look down is safer than having directions superimposed on the road, because you're driving and not flying?
Honestly, yes. You have to consciously decide to look down at an in-car UI, and change your focus to match. If something is constantly in your field of vision, it's going to consume more of your attention when you should be watching traffic around you.
My flight instructor phrased it this way. In a car in good conditions, you spend 95% of your time watching your surroundings. In an aircraft in visual conditions, you spend 70% of your time looking outside the cockpit. In an aircraft in instrument conditions, you spend maybe 5% of your time looking outside.
The pilot is focused on the hud first, the outside environment second. A car should be completely reversed from that.
> If you compare a GPS unit the user has to turn their head or worse look down to use vs. a Glass sitting above their vision with the directions always available at a glance, the Glass is pretty clearly superior.
My GPS (actually my phone in a special car dock) is right up on my dash/windscreen, always in my peripheral. I glance at it with ease. And while I am glancing at it, the road ahead of me is in my peripheral. That sounds a lot like what people are describing how to use Glass for GPS. Where are you mounting your GPS that it takes more than a glance to see?
>Heads up displays have already been proven by the military to be much safer.
Correction: Military heads up displays have already been proven by the military to be much safer. In order for their results to apply to Google Glass, they would have to install Angry Birds, Facebook, and YouTube on those devices, too.
The military also have teams of cognitive scientists A/B testing different HUD apps. I remember seeing one paper where they were A/B testing different presentations of incoming enemy fighter craft. This stuff is tested by people who have very deep knowledge about perception and attention, and aren't just an app slapped together in spare time.
I remember from that testing that there were three ways the threat was categorised by distance: safe, lethal, very lethal - the middle one was very specifically not "kinda in danger" :)
Consumption doesn't mean entertainment, unless you think navigation and driving alerts are entertainment?
Satnav systems potentially make us worse drivers as well. If I have to look down at the system (which I do) it's much more intrusive than Glass, which only requires I look up and slightly to the right to see. It is certainly not directly in front of your eye unless you are wearing it completely incorrectly.
Have you had Glass on? It isn't as intrusive as you appear to believe.
And to be clear, since you didn't say it, the screen is off between those turns. It also gives you audible directions just as any other GPS would, so you don't have to look at it.
A person shall not drive a motor vehicle if a television
receiver, a video monitor, or a television or video screen,
or any other similar means of visually displaying a
television broadcast or video signal that produces
entertainment or business applications
It doesn't have to be only an entertainment device. If it can produce entertainment or business applications, it's not allowed.
There are exceptions for devices that have interlocks that allow them to act only as a GPS, map, vehicle information system, or or rear-view camera display while the vehicle is in motion. The Glass doesn't meet these criteria as it has no such interlock.
That may be true of the unreleased Gen2 Google Glasses, which project the image directly in your field of vision, but it is most certainly not true of the Google Glass Explorers currently available, which require the user to look up at the display. In its current incarnation, Google Glass is just as distracting as looking at the radio or instruments, and should not be regarded as a HUD.
Google glass is a HUD. When it is on, it also projects directly into your eye. My honours thesis was comaparing the angle between the eyes when viewing items in a 'virtual screen' (eyepiece HUD) and a real screen (half-dome field at 3m). Glass uses the same technology as the military HUD - throwing collimated light into your eye and using your retina as the screen. Not to mention that the glass is still in your field of vision when looking elsewhere, you're just not directly focusing on it. Your field of vision is 'everything you see', not 'what you're focusing on'.
Similarly, in its current incarnation, I can watch video on Glass. My radio and instruments can't do the same.
Can't you alert the driver using an audio-only system that doesn't require Glass? And aren't audio-only GPS directions safer than video-delivered directions in general? Perhaps dash-mounted GPS screens should be outlawed as well.
Glass could potentially make us better drivers. One of the use cases we've looked at is wiring Glass up to alert drivers when someone is in their blind spot or someone is coming up too quickly behind them.
This citation is bogus. It's safer to look at Glass for directions than my nav system, but you wont see me get ticketed for looking at my nav system.