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.
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??
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.
It is customary to wear Glass with the screen off but not to do the equivalent with a phone. The law is not like software; the judge can consider the case and make the sensible ruling.
No, the phone company has evidence that it communicated with tower within some period of time. The phone could still be powered up in a disconnected state, or communicating with the same tower before the driver got into the car, or.. (insert 20 other possible mitigating circumstances)
It's not that simple. Which is one of the reasons it's a good thing this was dismissed.
It is the distraction to driving that illegal. All forms of distracted driving are illegal, at least that is my understanding of the law in Colorado and Texas USA. So purposely taking 2 second blinks, driving with one of two good eyes closed, driving with your knees, etc is a ticketable offense. Driving while holding a phone to your ear would fall into this category. Wearing google glass while off does not seem to.
Additional laws exist probably to increase the fine or the ease of enforcement of various distractions like using a phone.
> 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.
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.
What you are describing is exactly wrong behavior. You may think that most people become petty tyrants when placed in positions of minor authority (and there is some experimental support for this idea), but that doesn't mean that it is right. Given that their job requires that they be given the legal ability to do a lot of things that would be illegal for a non-police citizen to do, I believe that police officers should be given very little leeway for acting in bad faith (honest mistakes are a different story: I feel like most people are already quite intolerant of honest police mistakes, probably too much so).
Are you saying that the cop was wrong and that the citation was unwarranted under the law? If so, and if that is true, then I agree with you. However, that's not obvious as far as I know. Glasses which are essentially monitors are a pretty new thing, and California has existing law which states that "monitors" within the view of the driver (an exception is provided for mounted GPS) are illegal.
What I'm saying is that I believe the cop was within his rights to issue a citation. If that is true, then he did nothing wrong. He has discretion. If you're going to argue with the person who has a choice in whether or not to punish you then you should expect to be on the losing end.
It's no different than getting pulled over for speeding. Assuming that you were in fact speeding, the officer is allowed to issue a citation, or not. It's up to him. If you're a jerk then you're going to get one. "Tyrrany"? C'mon.
What I'm saying is that I believe the cop was within his rights to issue a citation.
Not if he didn't even try to discern whether it was being used for navigation. You ask whether the citation was unwarranted, but I think that betrays an authoritarian attitude. Was the citation warranted? The judge says no.
> What I'm saying is that I believe the cop was within his rights to issue a citation.
Cops don't have "rights" to issue citations. They have power to issue citation as an aspect of their job, and an obligation to use that power within its legal bounds, which include, in the case of issuing citations, generally that there be probable cause to believe that the person has violated the law identified on the citation.
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.
I've been pulled over for a "crack in the windshield" which wasn't visible from where the police officer's patrol car was sitting. I know because I went back and checked from his vantage point.
I get that you're trying to provide some nuance here, but let's not pretend that all police officers are honest and decent individuals just doing everything by the book. It goes both ways.
I think the GP has the idea that a cop needs a reason to pull anyone over. Unfortunately no such requirement exists anymore, IIRC the Supreme Court said that cops can lie about it. They keep up the pretense so as to not rub it in our faces how much of a police state we've become.
Except if he actually had his windshield cracked it's more likely that the cops saw it than that they pulled a random car over without cause and it turned out to have a cracked windshield.
It was, maybe 3 inches lengthwise, about 2 inches off the edge along the bottom with a black background. My real contention was that I was pulled over for being poor (in my hoopty '90 626 at the time) and he saw the crack when he approached. He also didn't mention the crack until he had spent the previous 25 minutes threatening and cajoling me to tell him if I had been drinking or drugging and driving.
I wouldn't have minded this if I were pulled over for speeding and he noticed and added it to the ticket but to get pulled over for being poor, harassed and then written a ticket for the windshield crack...
Maybe that's an acceptable way for the police to pull anyone they feel like over, but there should be some sort of suspicion required. I know this is the everyday experience of a lot of people but I don't think it's acceptable for it to happen to them either.
Citing for something found isn't bad practice per se, nor is pulling over searching for statistically likely infractions. But too many officers use this argument as an excuse for bad behavior.
I've been abused in a similar manner, versus given a warning and relevant "counselling" (how to not get pulled over) from an officer with a more mentoring style.
Reasonable suspicion is required for a traffic stop; the Supreme Court has ruled that stops to check for violations without reasonable suspicion violate the Fourth Amendment.
Of course, being legally required doesn't mean it is actually the practice.
Put it to you this way, your not being pulled over because they don't like you
Maybe not, but by the same token it's not OK for them to add to a ticket because their ego is challenged, and to do so raises all kinds of unfavorable stereotypes about law enforcement.
That's why police officers aren't Judge Dredd. It's really a character question whether a police officer subjects someone to defending themselves in a case like this, especially as part of a speeding ticket. Wait until there's an accident or something where it might play a role. That is, if they can keep their ego in check.
I'd like the principle to be that police should enforce the laws they know, and leave alone (or check) anything they're not sure about.
In this case I think it would've been most reasonable for the officer to ignore the fact that she was wearing Google Glass, and then check whether they should issue tickets for that in the future.
I don't think it was a matter of whether or not it was a crime per se, but that if it did fall afoul of the "monitor in view" law then it meant that there was a potential danger in its continued use.
It's not difficult to infer that the officer initially intended to issue a warning to the woman about wearing Glass while driving, and that she argued the point saying it was not illegal. Her argument definitely would've signaled her intent to continue driving while wearing Glass, which the officer would have construed as a potential safety risk.
The officer really had no choice in the matter at that point, I'd say.
There are a whole host of allowed monitor uses in cars, not the least that entire occupations are exempt from the law. From what I've read, the officer did not attempt to gather any information along those lines once they were challenged, they just decided to show her who's boss.
The Virginia Beach law lecturer with the great 'Don't talk to cops' video on youtube mentions that the federal government doesn't even know how much written law there is - they can't catalogue it all.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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).
> 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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> "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.
79 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 170 ms ] threadAnd if driving with Glass while it's on is illegal, shouldn't those dash mounts for phones be illegal too??
It's not that simple. Which is one of the reasons it's a good thing this was dismissed.
Additional laws exist probably to increase the fine or the ease of enforcement of various distractions like using a phone.
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.
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.
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.
What I'm saying is that I believe the cop was within his rights to issue a citation. If that is true, then he did nothing wrong. He has discretion. If you're going to argue with the person who has a choice in whether or not to punish you then you should expect to be on the losing end.
It's no different than getting pulled over for speeding. Assuming that you were in fact speeding, the officer is allowed to issue a citation, or not. It's up to him. If you're a jerk then you're going to get one. "Tyrrany"? C'mon.
Not if he didn't even try to discern whether it was being used for navigation. You ask whether the citation was unwarranted, but I think that betrays an authoritarian attitude. Was the citation warranted? The judge says no.
Cops don't have "rights" to issue citations. They have power to issue citation as an aspect of their job, and an obligation to use that power within its legal bounds, which include, in the case of issuing citations, generally that there be probable cause to believe that the person has violated the law identified on the citation.
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.
I get that you're trying to provide some nuance here, but let's not pretend that all police officers are honest and decent individuals just doing everything by the book. It goes both ways.
I wouldn't have minded this if I were pulled over for speeding and he noticed and added it to the ticket but to get pulled over for being poor, harassed and then written a ticket for the windshield crack...
Maybe that's an acceptable way for the police to pull anyone they feel like over, but there should be some sort of suspicion required. I know this is the everyday experience of a lot of people but I don't think it's acceptable for it to happen to them either.
I've been abused in a similar manner, versus given a warning and relevant "counselling" (how to not get pulled over) from an officer with a more mentoring style.
Of course, being legally required doesn't mean it is actually the practice.
Maybe not, but by the same token it's not OK for them to add to a ticket because their ego is challenged, and to do so raises all kinds of unfavorable stereotypes about law enforcement.
In this case I think it would've been most reasonable for the officer to ignore the fact that she was wearing Google Glass, and then check whether they should issue tickets for that in the future.
It's not difficult to infer that the officer initially intended to issue a warning to the woman about wearing Glass while driving, and that she argued the point saying it was not illegal. Her argument definitely would've signaled her intent to continue driving while wearing Glass, which the officer would have construed as a potential safety risk.
The officer really had no choice in the matter at that point, I'd say.
I suspect that Glass would beat out the Garmins and Tomtoms.
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.
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.
Think about the avg hourly commute to work - how useful would it be if that time could be used for something else!
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)
Link: http://skatter.com/2011/02/how-my-smart-phone-got-me-out-of-...
There are few if any cars that can't reach 85 mph sold in the last decade in California.
[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCTrsQaiD-0
Sounds grand if you phrase it like that.
http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/d12/vc27602.htm
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.
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...