Imagine you are driving down the road while wearing glasses. Nothing out of the ordinary is going on, so you quickly settle into a "driving groove," if you will. Then, suddenly, your glasses flash: they prompt you with a text message from a friend. So you tap a button on the side of your glasses and then start speaking, as your spoken words turn into typed words on your glasses. With one more click of a button, your text message is sent.
Does this sound like a scene from the distant future? Maybe a science fiction movie? Well, you may be shocked to find out that this very device is available (though not on a widespread basis) right now. It's called Google Glass, and it can do practically anything that cellphones can do today. In fact, a woman was recently ticketed for wearing Google Glass while driving her car.
The charge was essentially distracted driving -- the woman was cited in California, where it is against the law for a monitor to be visible to the driver. While this story raises quite a few alarms about the future of distracted driving, it also raises some questions about the varying distracted driving rules that are in place all across the country.
Some states may lack the stringent rules that many other states employ; while some states may not have a ban on texting while driving or cellphone use at all. It greatly varies from place to place. Just look at this Google Glass example: not every state bans monitors that are visible by the driver.
If we, as a society, really want to address the distracted driving issue, then we need stricter, more uniform rules that make it easy for people to understand. Distracted driving simply is not okay. In the meantime, many people rely on civil lawsuits to hold distracted drivers responsible for the accidents (and subsequent injuries) they caused due to their irresponsible behavior.
Source: CNN, "Drive in Google Glass, get a ticket," Heather Kelly, Oct. 30, 2013
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