worse than texting and driving

and that's aside from drinking and driving. 

There have been recent articles in the newspaper about a new product that Google is developing: high-tech glasses that one wears just like regular corrective lens glasses that allows the wearer to be 'plugged-in' to advanced information. I've also seen segments on television about this product.

For example, let's say one is visiting a foreign country and is sitting on a bench in a public park and sees a gorgeous church in the distance. By simply looking at the building, the image will compare the structure to a vast store of images that people have added to a database, and voila!, identification of the building plus information about it will appear on the lenses of the glasses. The same could happen with face recognition software, so we can know about the strangers we meet. How cool (and intrusive) is that? 

When I first learned of these glasses, I was wondering how big and bulky they would be. Are the frames thick? How conspicuous are the lenses? Well, from the recent photos I've seen, they are very modern looking, much like a pair of fashionable contemporary glasses. 

Now, for the great and serious problem I have with this new invention: imagine people wearing these distracting things while driving. Isn't it bad enough for people to be texting behind the wheel? Or talking on their cell phones? People have been spotted eating, applying makeup, etc. while driving and now there are going to be glasses/slash computers right in front of drivers' eyeballs? Am I overreacting by saying that these have no place on people's faces while they are operating two-ton vehicles? 

There have been articles that imagine humorous scenarios where people are wearing these while walking and then proceeding directly into telephone poles because they are so consumed by what is being displayed on the lenses. Or walking then falling down subway steps (less funny); is this not a hazard to public safety? 

There have been actual fatalities in the streets of San Francisco whereby bicyclists have hit and killed pedestrians on crosswalks - so it doesn't just happen with cars hitting people. Sitting on a bench while wearing these glasses would be safe; wearing them while moving could potentially be dangerous. Of course, I would caution people to always be aware of their surroundings in any case.

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A tragedy occurred just this morning in my hometown. A father and his children were riding their bikes when the driver of an SUV got distracted and drove up onto the sidewalk and killed the father and sent the children to the hospital in critical condition where at least one of them may have died too. The official report of what happened of course is not yet known, but apparently the driver of the SUV was a teenager and was occupied by texting on his cell phone, which is what caused him to lose sight of the road. 

9:30 on a Saturday morning taking one's children out for a family bike ride, and now the father is dead. A young teenage driver has to face the consequences of texting while driving, doing something that countless drivers do all the time. And soon in the future, there are going to be glasses with their 'screens' less than an inch away from drivers' eyes?

How is this making life better?