Google Glass Drivers Still Crash While Texting and Driving, But Recover More Quickly

Texting while driving is obviously dangerous, whether you're using a smartphone or Google Glass. Yet surprisingly, scientists have found that texting Glass users outperformed smartphone users when it came to regaining control of their vehicles after a traffic accident.

Distracted drivers are a menace on the road. In fact, the National Safety Council has found that cell phone use leads to at least 1.6 million crashes each year. With the emergence of Glass, states are now considering banning drivers from wearing this technology. Yet understanding how it impacts driving is important.

In order to see how well drivers performed while being distracted by Glass, the researchers set up an experiment with 40 volunteers in their twenties. Each participant drove in a car simulator with either Glass or a smartphone and was forced to react to a vehicle ahead slamming on its brakes. The researchers compared text-messaging participants' reactions on each device to times when they were just driving without multitasking.

"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."

In fact, the scientists found that those using Glass were no better at hitting their brakes in time. Yet after their close call, Glass users returned to driving normally more quickly.

"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."

The findings reveal that whether using a smartphone or Google Glass, texting isn't a good idea. Even though users of Glass recovered more quickly, the incident still occurred.