The West Virginia Google Glass Trouble

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Mar 26, 6:26AM EDT

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Bill HB 3057, proposed in the West Virginia legislature by 56-year-old Republican Gary G. Howell, would establish “the offense of operating a motor vehicle using a wearable computer with a head-mounted display.” The bill apparently is aimed in part at Google Inc.’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) Google Glass. The new age spectacles allow the wearer to get data on the surface of its glass screen. Call it a smartphone is disguise. Howell has never seen one. Nor does he know exactly how the device would work.

Section D (9) of the bill gets to the heart of the matter:

“Wearable computer with a head mounted display” means a computing device which is worn on the head and projects visual information into the field of vision of the wearer.

Howell appropriately wants to save people from themselves and the harm that they might do to others. He can count himself as a champion of safety, even if his advocacy challenges a product that does not exist commercially. For all he knows, Google Glass turns off distracting features when the user is behind the wheel of a car. If Google is inventive enough to build Glass, it is inventive enough to include that kind of feature.

Howell’s proposed fine for wearing a computing device on the head is much too small, given the mayhem the device could cause. People driving while wearing Google Glass could crash and cause injuries to cars and their occupants. But the price tag for a violation:

A person who violates the provisions of subsection (a) of this section is guilty of a traffic offense and, upon conviction thereof, shall for a first offense be fined $100; for a second offense be fined $200; and for a third or subsequent offense be fined $300. No court costs or other fees shall be assessed for a violation of subsection (a) of this section

Not even jail time.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.