The San Diego-area woman ticketed for driving while wearing Google Glass may be the first person to receive a citation for that exact violation. The problem is, the legal minds opining on this so far don’t really know what the exact violation is. According to The Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog, the CHP officer who ticketed Cecilia Abadie cited a California law that prohibits having a “television receiver, a video monitor, or a television or video screen” anywhere in front of the driver’s seat. But since Abadie had the device turned off when she was stopped, the lawyers speaking to the Journal figured it was more like having an idle cell phone in the driver’s seat with you, which is fine.
Abadie seems to think that if she goes before a judge, the judge’s opinion of technology in general will be what sways her case. On her Google+ page she wrote, “It’s all in how a judge will interpret it and I suspect their love or hate and understanding of the technology might help or the opposite.” The officer, she wrote, “was being really nasty and asking me again and again why I was wearing Google Glass in the car.”
Anyway, Abadie was also doing 75 in a 65 zone, which she cops to on her Google+ page. So prickly legal/tech questions aside, it looks like she’s probably going to be on the hook for at least some of this ticket.
