With West Virginia and Delaware considering laws to ban Google Glass in the car, the last state we'd expect to hate on these Futurama shades is California. But when the California Highway Patrol pulled over a woman near San Diego for speeding earlier this week, the officer cited her with a second violation for "driving with [a] monitor visible to driver" and explicitly wrote "Google Glass" on the ticket. We're not sure who's right or wrong in this case—the woman, 44-year-old Cecilia Abadie, who posted the ticket on her Google+ page, or the police, which likely issued the first-ever moving violation for such a gadget—but Googlers and lawyers are buzzing the web.
The actual state code says that drivers can't have a video monitor or "any other similar means of visually displaying a television broadcast or video signal that produces entertainment or business applications" that is visible while driving. The code allows all such features found on an in-car infotainment display, save for actual video, but also notes that any external devices are OK if they restrict the display to vehicle information, navigation, or as a "visual display used to enhance or supplement the driver's view forward, behind, or to the sides of a motor vehicle."
Mercedes urges drivers not to use Glass's navigation function until out of the car and walking to their final destination.
Commenters on Abadie's Google+ page offered to start an attorney fund in the hopes of setting a legal precedent while others pointed out that the law could make cradled smartphones and tablets illegal. One lawyer said that the officer would not be able to prove what Abadie was looking at when she was cited, and so the violation could be moot.
The biggest problem is Google itself, which has fed its Glass prototypes to like-minded beta testers and tech journalists without making clear what the devices actually can and can't do in public situations. It's why casinos, gyms, banks, and many other businesses have already banned them, a justifiable fear considering how easy it is to surreptitiously record someone with a smartphone.
Automakers aren't sure what to do, either. Only Mercedes-Benz has taken the early lead at integrating Google Glass into its vehicles. For now, the software mimics the company's mbrace2 smartphone app, in which a Glass wearer could save a destination, transfer the directions to the car's navigation system and then receive walking directions when the car is shut off.
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"We want to make sure that our customers do not use Google Glass while driving," said Johann Jungwirth, president and CEO of Mercedes-Benz R&D in North America. "We do not focus on any solution where you actually need Google Glass while driving."
While there's a good argument that in-car infotainment displays are just as confusing as text and graphics beamed directly to your retinas—if not more so—Google Glass could be redundant with today's factory head-up displays. (The dork factor, like the weirdos watching TV with 3-D glasses, is also something to consider.) But until Google releases a finished product, no one, especially traffic cops, will know whether it's legal behind the wheel.
from Car and Driver Blog http://blog.caranddriver.com
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