Woman Gets Driving Ticket for Wearing Google Glass

Cecilia Abadie, a woman from California was pulled over for driving while wearing Google Glass. She was supposedly guilty for “Driving with Monitor visible to Driver (Google Glass),” according to her .

In California there is a law that doesn’t allow people to drive while a video signal that produces entertainment or business application is located in front of the driver’s seat or in his eye sight. You can read the entire law below.

27602.  (a) A person shall not drive a motor vehicle if a television receiver, a video monitor, or a television or video screen, or any other similar means of visually displaying a television broadcast or video signal that produces entertainment or business applications, is operating and is located in the motor vehicle at a point forward of the back of the driver’s seat, or is operating and the monitor, screen, or display is visible to the driver while driving the motor vehicle.

But the law 27602 also has a point (b), which states that it does not apply for some specified equipments, which include (2) A global positioning display or (3) A mapping display. While we don’t know at the moment what Abadie was looking at on her Google Glass, it’s clear that if she was using the navigation, no laws were broken. We will contact Abadie to find out what was she using Glass for at the time of the incident.

The police also cited Abadie for speeding, so this might have been the main reason to pull over the woman.

We will follow this incident, because it will make a very interesting precedent, as people have had concerns about wearing Glass while driving. If used with the navigation app, it can prove to be much better than the cars built-in navigation, because you don’t have to take your eyes from the road in order to see the route. But not all regulators think like this and UK has already announced that it will impose a driving ban for Glass.

It seems like Google Glass can’t stay out of trouble and we keep reading about concerns regarded to the device. And I believe this trend will go upwards once the consumer edition gets released.