California woman who drove with Google Glass beats traffic ticket

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/17/us-usa-googleglass-trial-dismissal-idUSBREA0F1XR20140117

by kjhughes • 13 years ago

62 79 13 years ago

bedhead2• 13 years ago

If this works, why isn't this same argument used for challenging tickets for using a phone while driving? All the same logic still applies.

pmorici• 13 years ago

Because if you are holding a phone to your ear you are by definition using it. Glasses could be just hanging out on your head though. Perhaps if you drove around with your phone strapped to your head with a sweat band you could make the same argument.

bedhead2• 13 years ago

No, I could be holding it to my ear despite it being turned off, as stupid as that sounds. The point is, in the case of the phone, the officer never has proof that the phone was on.

And if driving with Glass while it's on is illegal, shouldn't those dash mounts for phones be illegal too??

Zikes3• 13 years ago

Odle said he had not been planning to cite Abadie for wearing Google Glass, but that he did so because of her reaction to his questions. "She got a little argumentative about whether or not it was legal for her to wear them," he said.

At first this sounded pretty vindictive, as though I could hear the officer ending the argument with "fine, we'll let the judge decide!" But after a little thought that sounds like a rather reasonable reaction.

Clearly there was some confusion about the legality and technically it did qualify as a "monitor", so some sort of legal precedent would be necessary to adequately end that argument, and the only way to get it into the courts was to issue a citation.

martypitt• 13 years ago

I think you're giving the officer a very generous amount of "benefit of the doubt".

He didn't say "I wasn't sure about the legality, so I referred it to a judge", rather saying he cited her because she got argumentative.

ie., "Don't challenge me if you disagree, otherwise I'll treat you as though you've broken the law."

That's pretty crappy behaviour on the officer's behalf IMHO.

Pxtl• 13 years ago

Yeah, sounds like Contempt of Cop.

Karunamon2• 13 years ago

Pretty typical, unfortunately..

droopybuns• 13 years ago

If we have to choose between a cop and a glasshole for douchebaggery, we all lose.

EpicEng6• 13 years ago

If you're going to argue with someone who has the power to make your life difficult then, well, prepare for your life to get a bit more difficult. The cop didn't do anything illegal. Under the law I believe he can cite her (the whole "monitor" thing), but he has discretion. The law is a bit vague, enforcement will be up to the judge.

Regardless, it sounds like she was argumentative. That's fine, but accept the consequences. Like I said, he is free to cite her, and I don't necessarily blame him for doing so given what I've read.

cLeEOGPw• 13 years ago

It is clearly stated that using visual monitors while driving is against the law in the state.

Shivetya• 13 years ago

I will side with the cop here. Knowing a few who are in this line of work I am more than amazed at what they put up with. Put it to you this way, your not being pulled over because they don't like you, your not being pulled over because they are having a bad day, your being pulled over because you flagged yourself; speeding, running a stop sign, tail light out, etc.

There is no reason to get argumentative with someone doing their job, let alone a traffic cop. All that while they are working on your incident they have to watch out for traffic, your actions, and ensuring you don't get so excited your a threat to yourself or them.

More than likely, being familiar with "our type"; techies, she came off as a pretentious twit and treated him with contempt for being an ignorant cop.

InclinedPlane• 13 years ago

I'm going to say that it is entirely unreasonable for the police to be ignorant of the law.

jfoster2• 13 years ago

Law is complicated. No one has full knowledge of it. Even lawyers and judges need to look stuff up.

Zikes3• 13 years ago

The point is that there was no law to be ignorant of, as there had been no precedent for whether or not Google Glass qualified as a "monitor in view".

dhruvmittal• 13 years ago

Some research needs to be done on how distracting Glass is to drivers. I'm particularly interested in comparing the distraction caused by using Glass to navigate compared to the typical built-in navigation systems that ship with most cars today.

I suspect that Glass would beat out the Garmins and Tomtoms.

ben1040• 13 years ago

If you're using Glass for navigation, it generally stays out of the way. If you're approaching a turn you're due to make, it will beep at you and a voice will tell you what to do. Only at that point does the screen come on, and displays a fairly simple map drawing. Once you take the turn, the screen fades off.

If you're wearing Glass properly, the screen is also up at an angle above your eye. If you're sitting in the driver's seat of a vehicle and looking forward, the display would be about at the area where your sun visor would be if it were flipped down over the top of your windshield.

vacri4• 13 years ago

Giving our office's Glass to people to test, they're so distracted that they'll walk into things. Sometimes these things are pillars clearly visible at eye level.

I personally hate the idea of drivers wearing these things. My undergraduate was in psychology, neurophysiology, and hence I've been formally trained in attention and perception - I've got a better idea than layfolk on how these are compromised, though I'm not a professional in the field. In my opinion, the Glass is a significant attentional split - which is bad for driving. One example: say voice control is working fine (it doesn't always). You still have to take your eyes off the road, target a small reticle, make sure the glass is responding correctly. Even after that, there's still issues like just having a phone call in the car, which regardless of the device is a driving-performance-reducing attentional split.

Glass really, really impresses me as a technological feat; as a product I think it's a solution looking for a problem; and as a social phenomenon, I think it's quite dangerous when mixed with common activities like driving.

chii• 13 years ago

i expect driving to become automated sooner or later tho. I think human driving is the major cause of accidents, and automating it is really the best way to save lives, create better traffic conditions for smoother transportation, and also relieve the time required for the driver, so that other activities can be engaged.

Think about the avg hourly commute to work - how useful would it be if that time could be used for something else!

saulrh• 13 years ago

Here's some research from Thad Starner, who is actually the person in charge of the Glass project over at Google: Citation: http://dmrussell.net/CHI2010/docs/p1695.pdf. He studied the performance of people doing a warehouse box-filling task using orders given on paper in a couple of forms, spoken, or presented through a head-mounted display like Glass. Summary was that workers using HDMs are more focused, work faster, and commit fewer errors overall, mostly because they spend less time switching contexts and have the information much more available.

marvin• 13 years ago

A warehouse job doesn't require constant attention and have moving hazards randomly show up, though. I don't think this research generalizes to driving a car.

dchichkov• 13 years ago

Anecdotal evidence for you. I've tried driving in it a few times and wearing Glass wile driving is very distracting during the night time. Even when the glass was switched off every light was reflecting on the sides, it was distracting me from driving and in around twenty minutes (I was driving to Tahoe) I've started getting a headache and felt slightly nauseated (not normal for me, I can read in the car fine, without feeling any nausea). It all right during daytime, you barely notice when Glass is off and using navigation during daytime is also Ok (better than looking at a cellphone, worse than having voice-guided navigation).

sheetjs• 13 years ago

Blair also dismissed a speeding ticket against Abadie, because an expert did not appear to testify to the calibration on the officer's speedometer. Blair said there was a lack of evidence to establish Abadie's driving speed.

This still happens? I thought it was pretty standard for officers to calibrate and maintain written records (at least, it's standard in new york)

sahaskatta• 13 years ago

Similar situation happened to me 2 years ago and I was dismissed in part because of the lack of evidence to back the calibration of a radar gun.

Link: http://skatter.com/2011/02/how-my-smart-phone-got-me-out-of-...

bagels2• 13 years ago

Most people just pay regardless, so it's not really a priority for them to keep calibrations up to date, or to show up for court. It's pretty easy to win a speeding ticket case this way.

whalesalad• 13 years ago

  Highway Patrol Officer Keith Odle testified that he estimated Abadie
  had been driving her Toyota Prius at 85 miles per hour (137 km/h)
  in a 65 mph (105 km/h) zone when he pulled her over.

Case dismissed. Oh and Officer you're being suspended without pay for falsifying evidence, everyone knows a Prius can't go that fast.

was_hellbanned• 13 years ago

"Woz gets $700 speeding ticket for doing 104 MPH in Toyota Prius" (http://macdailynews.com/2007/08/21/woz_gets_700_speeding_tic...)

eps• 13 years ago

That's no stock firmware.

bagels2• 13 years ago

Google says that the top speed for a Prius is 112.

There are few if any cars that can't reach 85 mph sold in the last decade in California.

jmspring• 13 years ago

I've been lectured by the wife for driving her pod car...err...prius at speeds she doesn't appreciate. That speed was somewhere between said post and what Woz was cited for. It it possible, though in general they prefer to stay in the #1 lane at below the posted speed limit.

viraptor• 13 years ago

No. You can easily do over 100mph.

geetee• 13 years ago

How is the Glass' HUD any different than the ones that get projected on windshields?[1]

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCTrsQaiD-0

btgeekboy• 13 years ago

Glass will play, amongst other things, video. It doesn't have the built in protections that video-playing car stereos have for not showing video while the vehicle is in motion.

Crito• 13 years ago

Glass does not provide a HUD. It is more like gluing a smartphone to your rear view mirror.

m_mueller• 13 years ago

Does Google Glass have some visible indicator whether it's on, similar to webcams? If not I think this should be added as soon as possible, in fact I believe it should be the law for any video camera switched on in public places.

vacri4• 13 years ago

You can see that there's an image on the glass if you're facing the user, but you have to be fairly close.

tgraham• 13 years ago

She didn't beat a ticket; the state had no evidence to present to the court that proved she'd done any thing wrong; a neat side step by the judge.

xiongwei_13• 13 years ago

So, must used Google Glass with Google Driverless Car.

guydropingout• 13 years ago

Wow!

NameNickHN• 13 years ago

Developers are already crafting apps [..]

Sounds grand if you phrase it like that.

sushirain• 13 years ago

You can't use a monitor while driving? The law says it's legal to use a mapping display while driving in California:

http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/d12/vc27602.htm

olalonde2• 13 years ago

In the future, people will pay a few cents to upload a hash of their video into the Bitcoin blockchain to prove the video was taken before a given date.

sentenza• 13 years ago

Seriously. That is an interesting application of bitcoin. Does that work with Bitcoin, or would it be neccessary to construct another "Coin" specifically for that purpose?

I'm highly sceptical of Bitcoin as currency, since there are so many conflicts between the technical properties of Bitcoin and the economics of currencies, but de-centralized verification of events and dates? _That_ sounds interesting.

olalonde2• 13 years ago

It's actual possible today: http://www.proofofexistence.com/. It should work with other forks of Bitcoin as well.

Tehnix2• 13 years ago

"As a hands-free device it is safer than a cell phone."

According to studies[0] hands-free devices aren't as safe as you'd think. I can't argue whether they are safer, but at least "safer" isn't just enough in itself to justify it.

Also, from personal experience I have to agree with the study. The fact that my one hand is either up against my ear holding a device, or if the device is lying somewhere; the former doesn't require much extra of my attention than the latter. It is the talking and thinking of different things itself that takes away my attention from the road. Not saying one can't talk and drive (it's quite easy), but since the line is already drawn, it has to be uphold.

I haven't personally tried Google Glass', but could imagine it interferes with your vision a bit. It might be necessary for this to be subject for investigation as to the legality in the future.

[0] http://unews.utah.edu/news_releases/hands-free-talking-texti...

California woman who drove with Google Glass beats traffic ticket

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