Want to Text & Drive? Don't Count on Google Glass for That.
Glassholes, beware: Just because you’re wearing some spiffy headgear, doesn’t mean it’s safe for you to use your phone while doing other things.
An experiment by the University of Central Florida tested 40 drivers who were either given a smartphone or Google Glasses to use in a driving simulator. All drivers were forced to react when the “car” in front of them slammed on its brakes. Drivers’ reaction time was compared to their times when driving without distractions. Researchers found that, although the drivers using Google Glass were able to recover faster after an accident had occurred, the Glasses weren’t likely to stop an accident happening in the first place.
“More importantly,” UCF researcher Ben Sawyer said in a post on the university's website, “For every measure we recorded, messaging with either device negatively impacted driving performance. Compared to those just driving, multitaskers reacted more slowly, preserved less headway during the brake event, and subsequently adopted greater following distances.”
Relying on Google Glass to be a safer driver, then, isn’t a great bet. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, at any given moment across the United States, approximately 660,000 people are using some form of electronic gadget while driving. It’s estimated that 421,000 people were injured in motor vehicle accidents that involved a distracted driver in 2012.
These statistics are not surprising considering previous studies about cell phone use while traveling. Pedestrians have been found to be in serious danger if talking on the phone while walking, and studies showed that using a cell phone requires more brain activity than solving math problems.
The fact that Glass users regained control of their vehicles more quickly after the “accidents,” however, does give researchers hope that the technology can one day be used to keep people safe. Luckily, Google’s self-driving cars have already hit the roads so the day when we live in a world run completely by the company that started out as a search engine is nigh.
[Pic via Flickr - Royal Opera House Covent Garden]
