The vast majority of car drivers are incompetent even without distraction.

There's probably about 30 or so 'Super Licenced' drivers on the planet who might just about handle a HUD were they to have one....

They are more skilled, Jafo's correct e driving skills. But even then, the pilots' roads are a bit less crowded and there's a division of labor with 4-6 eyes watching things.

Even better if done while parked at the side of the road.

Faraday cages should be part of default auto bodies. 

Training is meaningless. Multitasking is MUCH less efficient than "One thing at a time." That's because the brain is built to handle one thing at a time.

The HUD's, etc. all distract and one has to refocus from the road to the HUD then back again. That time (x velocity) = distance travelled NOT paying attention to the road, other cars, etc.

permanent GPS checking would probably drain the battery pretty fast, so i don't really think that is an option. there sure can be an optional car mode, similar to the flight mode for mobile devices. will that work? well, i most often turn on the flight mode for the iPad and then forget about the phone. (luckily nobody ever has heard about a plane crash due to a mobile phone, so the whole thing might be fud anyways)

Google Glass is an amazing technology, i'm just not sure whether it will be widely adopted. right now the thing is plain ugly and at least i wouldn't wear it. i have to wear glasses anyways, but i sure like the choice an optician has to offer. the choice among phones for example is much, much smaller. i think it's just the slow news season right now. let's hope the police wont start checking glasses from now on, that would be pretty annoying.

well.. obviously they expect you to be sitting in one of them google cars and not actually doing the driving.

I also dislike the idea of having google glass while driving simply because it is distracting like you guys already said if it would benefit us we could simply make windows that display the same thing we have the tech already but it would cost more than those cheap glasses from google.
But i hardly doubt that google glasses would be more dangerous than typing on your cell phone while driving since your focus is not on the road , how can it if you have a touch device and it requires input opening of an app dialling a cell number if you don’t have voice control activated.
I think a phone is by far more dangerous and therefore i cant hate on the idea of Gglass.
What iam saying is that having goggles/glasses that are fully voice controlled  and display info directly in an area not in the focus is by far more relaxing + safer ---than having a phone that is somewhere on the passenger side seat (or navigation system),  1-3 second where no one pays attention to the road and looks for the phone and potentially some more seconds to get the desired app running- even though it is illegal to use your phone without a hands-free system i know plenty that still do use them.
And even if you have the hands free system and you’re having a phone call you’re not paying attention at least not to a full amount you should.
Don’t believe me ? Even Mythbusters tested it and Folks were total distracted
Driving isn’t that easy I know in the US making a license isn’t as complicated as here but you also have different speed limits than we do here
We don’t have these limits here- if my car would have enough "ponys" to run 300km/h or more nobody will stop me for driving that fast in an open speed limit area of the highway. 

Imagine going 240km/h or 150mph (+-) what is not that fast but if you’re on the highway and you don’t pay attention for only 3 seconds it adds up
here is a little math: 1 Kilometer per hour is 0,277777778 meters per second
0,277777778 x 240 = 66,66666672 meters per second looking for your phone that takes 3 second to find
3 x  66,66666672meters/second = 200 meters in 3 seconds + some Millimeters
1 meter = 3,2808399ft
200 x 3,2808399 = 656,16798ft thats almost two football fields looking for a phone ( thinking this would be better than having glasses and watching the street – silly ! )

OK you passed almost two football fields in these three seconds looking for your phone and now there is an obstacle in front of you approximately 150 meters/ 490ft ahead and you pump the break or break foot down ( even better emergency breaking is good for mother nature )

speed : 240km/h / 150mph
the reaction distance : 72meters/s  or 236ft/s
breaking distance on Emergency break : 288m or 944ft
distance until full stop: 360m or 1181ft remember the obstacle was 490ft ahead !

 It doesn’t matter how good of a driver you are if this happens and you have no option to turn left or right or pass the obstacle you certainly up for a bad day.

That is why I think the idea of glass isn’t as bad as the current smartphone generation we have going that is if it would be fully voice controlled and would replace the phone. 

you guys are aware that HUDs in cars are a reality since quite a while and nobody requires any "special training" to use them?

http://www.bmw.com/com/en/insights/technology/technology_guide/articles/head_up_display.html

flagyl...I'm not 100% sure it isn't a distraction. If one's tuned to the news and something important is said, one's attention is drawn to that. That's the definition of distracted driving, no?

let's not forget that due to the high costs the talent pool in motorsports is very small. it probably has the highest millionaire heir ratio of all sports (Chilton or Nannini come to mind right now and i'm sure there are plenty more)

or remember Luc Alphand, who after he got to old for alpine skiing, made a pretty successful motorsports career.

also it seems that many people here underestimate what the human brain is capable of. sure, if all the roads in your place are going straight and people obey nanny speed limits, you'll never learn how to drive a car. that's like learning to climb in the mountains of Florida then probably even the radio might distract you so much that you'll drive your car into the next tree.

now compare that to the other extreme, traffic in a major city in India. where you have seven or eight vehicles on two lanes. up to five people on a motorbike, holy cows roaming the streets (this is not a cliche) and nobody following any rules. still there are few accidents and less traffic jams than in Europe.

does that mean Indians are smarter than Westerners? no, they are just used to drive with much higher attention levels and are not easily distracted. one just learns to rise to the occasion.

so does that mean i'll like the idea of Google Glass for driving?

no, not so much. it is just too capable to be non-distracting, and people will forget or willingly ignore any probably not even existing car mode. i could also imagine that information staying at the same point while moving your head could be difficult, a windshield hud is a better solution although more expensive.

i wonder how many samples did the Department of Transport get to do their studies though? none, right? 

First of all: Yay for the Brits pre-empting Google Glass with a road-ban. Research has shown time and again that driving while carrying out a conversation, be it handheld, handsfree, vocal or through texting is very, very dangerous. Humans should not be doing anything else while driving, period, but carrying on a conversation is one of the worst things you can do.

Warning: wall of text!

Many people underestimate just how bad humans are at multitasking. When it comes to multitasking, we suck. We believe we can do it, but we can't, really! Don't believe me? Look up the myriad of attentional blindness tests. Hell, look up the myriad of tests regarding cellphones and driving. Driving while calling "handsfree" really isn't all that much better than holding the phone. Only "not having a conversation" is much better. Calling, texting or whatever using voice, or a HUD because then you can then "keep your eyes on the road" is an illusion. If you're paying attention to a conversation, you are not actually seeing nearly as much as you think you are (again, see attentional blindness), regardless of where your eyes are looking, leading to a severely increased reaction time, or even no reaction at all.

As for the German lack of speed limits. It's crazy. Going those speeds is nothing short of suicidal and in fact insurance companies won't pay if the driver exceeds certain speedlimits. Whenever I get passed by one of those maniacs (I occasionally pass through Germany) I sure as hell hope they aren't doing anything cellphone related. Having a cellphone within reach (and especially when using it) whilst driving is irresponsible, regardless of laws. Humans were never designed to  go 100 kph (60 mph, our natural top speed is several factors lower), let alone much faster than that: our reaction times are already slow to begin with (which is why keeping a safe distance is so important), increasing them by doing something else is not a good idea.

As for radio: yes radio can be a distraction. But it is a one-sided conversation, requiring no user input. This severely limits the amount of attention required to sustain "radio" while driving. There are no social rules to violate when the driver suddenly can't pay attention to the radio anymore, nor does the driver have a maximum social response time before the silence becomes rude and if he/she misses half of the subject, who's going to notice? Still, many people subconsciously realise that even the radio is a distraction: whenever it becomes busier on the road (the exception being already IN the traffic jam) or special attention is required (such as when looking for direction-signs) a lot of people will turn down the radio. I once saw Jerry Seinfeld mocking this habit during the "stand up" bit he opened his comedy series with, but it is a characteristic that actually marks an attentive driver. Radio also has one major upshot: although driving safely and attentively is a very intensive task, it can be incredibly booooring. Radio keeps people awake, and awake and slightly-distracted (with no social obligations to their distraction) drivers are still much better than fast-asleep drivers.

HUDs can be useful in some cases though, but only if they aid in driving, not if they aid in doing something else. If they give you your speed without looking down, inform you of the topography of the road ahead (I am so glad tomtom displays a map alongside the voice information so I immediately have a clear idea of what is coming and can thus pay better-directed attention) and inform you if you don't keep enough distance, they can actually minimise the time you spend distracted while looking those things up yourselves. Keep in mind, however, that displaying the speed in the HUD is NOT better because it keeps you looking forward, it is only better because it SHORTENS the time spent paying attention to something else (finding your current speed). Whilst looking at your speed, you are effectively blind for anything else, no HUD will change that.

As for the India example. I am very curious where you got your information from that Indians are somehow better drivers. Having been there myself, I don't recall seeing anywhere near as many accidents in the Netherlands as I saw in, for instance, New Delhi. And I remember a ton of traffic jams... (it's not just Holy Cows, it's also pedestrians, camels and elephants on highway-like roads. Official lane-count 6, actual "lane use" 10. Still, because firsthand experience is not  representative test, I decided if to see if I could back up my impression through raw data:

Fatalities per 100,000 motor vehicles per year:

Netherlands: 7

United Kingdom: 7

Germany: 7.2

United States: 15

India: 100

Although there are nations with even ten (!!) times the fatality rate of India, countries with better organised roadtraffic do MUCH better than those "awesome" Indian drivers. They might be good drivers, but the sheer chaos is getting a lot of people killed. (Yes they aren't helped by generally having lower-quality cars and there are other factors at play, but the magnitude of the difference strongly suggests that a crowded, chaotic driving environment is detrimental to traffic safety, exactly what laboratory studies show. This environment, btw, does not stop Indians from texting/calling behind the wheel (first-hand experience).  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate)

India does score lower than the USA in one statistic though:

Fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants per year:

United Kingdom: 3.59

Netherlands: 3.9

Germany: 4.5

India: 11.8

United States: 12.3

I'm gonna propose that the extra-high number of casualties in the US is due to the immense vehicle-penetration of the American society, although the USA does perform worse than the European nations mentioned. (I didn't look at southern and eastern european nations and am willing to believe they don't do as well as the strongly regulated UK, the Netherlands and Germany (in spite of it's free-speed highways, less than 50% of the highway surface is actually unrestricted).

Driving whilst distracted is dangerous. To you AND to others. Simply don't call and drive. If you must call, park your car, if you can't, keep it as short as possible and very FYI. If you must "be social" and drive, wait till the Google Car can drive for you...

Is this not the topic "England and Google Glass", discussing the pre-emptive ban on Google Glass precisely because of its outside-driving features and multi-tasking temptations? Because that's what I thought this topic was about.

And as a matter of fact, driving is already multitasking with very diverse information coming in. This is precisely why it is such an attention-intensive process. Quite a few accidents actually occur because people where "distracted" by one attention-grabbing-and-possibly-important-piece-of information on the road (such as a traffic accident, or a swerving truck) only to miss another crucial piece of information (the suddenly lit break-lights of the car in front, for instance).

Driving is multitasking. Using HUD's and the like should only be done to reduce the multitasking complexity, not increase it. Google Glass functions much like a smartphone, it will very likely compound the multitasking issues while society presses for more multitasking, especially socially. A study on multitasking therefore fits quite well in this topic...

Would you please back your claim up with some statistics? Again, from first person experience, Indian cities are NOT safe when it comes to traffic, even when the inevitable gridlock occurs...