If one of your reasons for possibly purchasing Google Glass is safer communication while driving, you might want to rethink your assumptions.
In what he’s calling the first study of its kind, University of Central Florida researcher Ben Sawyer has tested the notion that texting with Google Glass while driving is safer than doing it the old fashioned way. What he found was … not really.
“Texting with either a smartphone or Glass will cause distraction and should be avoided while driving,” says Sawyer.
But wait? Is it even a little safer? Turns out, yes, kind of.
“Glass did help drivers in our study recover more quickly than those texting on a smartphone. We hope that Glass points the way to technology that can help deliver information with minimal risk,” he says.
But…
“While Glass-using drivers demonstrated some areas of improved performance in recovering from the brake event, the device did not improve their response to the event itself. More importantly, 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.”
Ok, just don’t text and drive. It doesn’t matter what you’re using to do it, it’s probably distracting.
It’s important to note that Sawyer’s experiment only involved 40 people, and it had them text about math while driving in a simulator (I can’t even text about math properly while sitting on my couch). It’s only one study – and a small one at that.
But honestly, people. Even if it is hands free, do you really think Google Glass or any other wearable could remove all distraction from what is inherently a distracting activity? It’s probably going to be against the law to even use Google Glass while driving anyway.
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