Just to make sure I'm not misunderstanding you, you're saying that having a display in front of your eyes would distract you from other things, for example the road?
Surely in cases where this is important you can simply turn off the display? A piece of glass or plastic isn't going to interrupt anyone's vision, as we can see by everyone who wears glasses when driving.
Furthermore, I don't agree that any loss of optical clarity is "way" more dangerous than perfect vision, nor that something being displayed on the glasses need be perceptible at all.
For example, if a glasses wearing driver were to swap out their moderately rimmed glasses for fancy clear-framed glasses, their safety would be inpercievably improved. At times, it is easy to not notice dust on your glasses.
Now, there is certainly potential for far more obstruction to be had, and the case for changing focus is surely one to be considered, however the claim that it is necessarily "way safer" to not have anything present close to your eye that is not completely transparent is incorrect. As a simple counterexample, the glasses could change tint or brightness according to driving conditions, improving the vision of the driver. Drivers already do this by putting sunglasses on, these glasses could do it automatically.
I'm talking about the display being enabled (else it would simply be similar to regular glasses) bringing two problems:
- the sight problem: both eyes converge and focus simultaneously (unless you have some serious neurologic issue). Unless Google solved the problem of measuring the the lens curvature (i.e eye focal distance) and send light rays the proper way in a ridiculously tiny and cheap package (compared to currently available professional equipment measuring such values), it is sending them in a best-effort way on a fixed focale. Hence the display will look blurred for some focal distances (possibly obscuring all of part of the field of view in a significant manner), while when at the correct focal distance change of focus takes time (possibly preventing to see or notice stuff in a timely manner, or at all).
- the cognitive load problem: even simple notifications on your computer eats away your productivity, so imagine the firehose of your digital life randomly pinging you while driving.
The first one is a general concern covering many areas (safety, health, comfort...) while the second one is making a point that it does not bring anything to safety while driving.
According to David Pogue of the NYT who tried them on back in September the display is "invisible" unless you focus on it:
"The biggest triumph — and to me, the biggest surprise — is that the tiny screen is completely invisible when you’re talking or driving or reading. You just forget about it completely. There’s nothing at all between your eyes and whatever, or whomever, you’re looking at.
And yet when you do focus on the screen, shifting your gaze up and to the right, that tiny half-inch display is surprisingly immersive. It’s as though you’re looking at a big laptop screen or something.
(Even though I usually need reading glasses for close-up material, this very close-up display seemed to float far enough away that I didn’t need them. Because, yeah — wearing glasses under Glass might look weird.)"
Surely in cases where this is important you can simply turn off the display? A piece of glass or plastic isn't going to interrupt anyone's vision, as we can see by everyone who wears glasses when driving.
Furthermore, I don't agree that any loss of optical clarity is "way" more dangerous than perfect vision, nor that something being displayed on the glasses need be perceptible at all.
For example, if a glasses wearing driver were to swap out their moderately rimmed glasses for fancy clear-framed glasses, their safety would be inpercievably improved. At times, it is easy to not notice dust on your glasses.
Now, there is certainly potential for far more obstruction to be had, and the case for changing focus is surely one to be considered, however the claim that it is necessarily "way safer" to not have anything present close to your eye that is not completely transparent is incorrect. As a simple counterexample, the glasses could change tint or brightness according to driving conditions, improving the vision of the driver. Drivers already do this by putting sunglasses on, these glasses could do it automatically.