If you have sensory issues, walking along the roads can already be hell. riding the buses impossible. bicycling impossible.
I suspect the response [to heads-up displays] will be INTENSIFY SAFETY SIGNALPOWER! INTENSIFY SAFETY SIGNALPOWER! which may as well be EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!
A HUD that shows stuff like speed, some basic GPS info, things of that sort would be nice to have standard in a car just so you can not look down to check speed, etc. But popping up text messages, pics of the wife, calls from Joe in marketing, NO, just NO.
I have mixed feelings. Large fines don’t seem to have deterred many drivers from using smart phones while driving. While I fully agree that the drivers using such devices will still be distracted, it has to be better then staring at your crotch.
Just another alarmist post from the fear-of-the-future types at Boing Boing. Thousands of fighter pilots have been using heads-up displays for years. Number of cyclists hit: zero.
If you’re constantly fiddling with your dashcam, you’ve got a pretty crap dashcam. I say this as someone who has a dashcam that can be purchased for as little as 15USD.
Once the jokester/blackhat hackersphere discovers the “connected car”, the real hilarity will begin!
So I totally wanted one, until I saw it was $300.
You heard that? PILOTS USE IT
You know what pilots doesn’t have? Road traffic and pedestrians.
Fugging idiots.
You’re piloting a ton or more of hurtling deadly machinery.
BE HERE NOW
Text later.
I remember when seeing someone driving erratically automatically had me assuming they were drunk. Now, it’s almost always someone on the phone or trying to text. I no longer worry about drunk drivers. I worry about, for example, the guy in his 60’s trying to figure out how this darn phone works while he’s driving 80 mph… I mean 70 mph… 60… oh wait, what lane was he in? I feel like this type of dashcam really can’t make things any worse than they are now.
As a motorcycle and bicycle commuter I want to loathe this. As a pilot, I want to love it. True, this will just enable nasty multitasking habits to continue when we really ought to be a bunch of zen monks focused on nothing but the road. In practice, I see automotive heads up displays as a potentially significant form of harm reduction. Hating on them is like hating on e-cigs; certainly not ideal, but consider the alternative…
The other day I was waiting to turn onto a very busy road and as I waited I began to count, and nearly half of the drivers who went by were talking on their phones. Just a data point.
Sure… the HUD in my 2006 car seems to think otherwise.
Like others here, my car already has a HUD, and driving is safer because of it. (My understanding is that they’ve been in cars since at least the 90’s.) Once you’re used to having your instruments on the road, you really start to notice when driving another car that forces you to constantly take your eyes off the road while you operate it. (HUD hardware only adds ~$400 to the cost of a car (not counting R&D to make the car-computer HUD-enabled), so it really should be a standard feature in even basic cars, much like ABS).
TXTing while driving is illegal, it doesn’t matter where the message is being displayed. A HUD doesn’t change that. But if a feature already exists in a car (instruments, nav, radio, etc), and drivers are already taking their eyes off the road because of it, then moving the display out onto the road via HUD is a safety improvement.
Fighter pilots spend a lot of time in intensive training before they even get airborne. Automobile drivers… not so much.
Not to mention, calls from the wife. Or text messages…
And what they do have: hundreds (if not thousands) of hours of training to fly multi-million-dollar death machines.
Exactly!
I’d love a HUD that meant I didn’t need to look away to see the map. Or which alerted me to road conditions or whatever. Calls are dicey, texts are straight out!
Can we get such a display that can be attached to a Raspberry Pi or a similar thing? Then just add a OBD-II interface and some software and it can do whatever you wish.
…and miniaturize it for pedestrians for goggles.
I think you done got got there… 
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