Study Shows Danger of Google Glass Texting While Driving
Source: Osvaldo Nunez
(Photo : REUTERS/Ints Kalnins) Be it a smartphone or Google Glass, texting while driving remains one of the most dangerous things you can do on the road. According to scientists however, Glass users that texted on the road were slightly safer than smartphone users in regards to regaining control on the road.
Be it a smartphone or Google Glass, texting while driving remains one of the most dangerous things you can do on the road. According to scientists however, Glass users that texted on the road were slightly safer than smartphone users in regards to regaining control on the road.
According to the National Safety Council, Cell phone use leads to 1.6 million crashes per year. Thanks to Google Glass, many states are considering banning these technologies from the road.
Conducting an experiment with 40 volunteers in their twenties, researchers had each participant drive in a car simulator with either a Glass or smartphone and were forced to react to an incoming vehicle by slamming on its brakes.
"Texting with either a smartphone or Glass will cause distraction and should be avoided while driving," said Ben Sawyer, one of the researchers, in a news release. "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."
It turned out; those who used Glass were not much better at hitting their brakes in time than those who used a smartphone. Nonetheless, Glass users were able to return to driving normally.
"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," said Sawyer. "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."
What these findings show is that whether it be a smartphone or Google Glass, texting is not a good idea when on the road.
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