internet, we just can<u+2019>t quit you. climb into the car, and<u+2026>bleep! my smartphone knows a better route. blop! it<u+2019>s a message from my boss. bling! trump<u+2019>s hair is trending. bam! i just drove into a ditch. laws haven<u+2019>t put an end to texting while driving. finger-wagging psas also haven<u+2019>t reduced the 3,000 fatal crashes a year caused by distracted drivers. shutting off the internet entirely is the safest bet for drivers, but if that<u+2019>s not going to happen (and seriously, it<u+2019>s not happening ), is there a sensible alternative? i<u+2019>ve been testing the navdy , a gadget that treats driver distraction as a design failing, not a bad habit. the navdy sits on my car<u+2019>s dashboard and projects transparent maps, texts, songs, tweets and other smartphone info out onto the road ahead. incoming message? i wave my hand to the left, and the navdy reads it for me. if i exceed the speed limit, my floating speedometer turns red. didn<u+2019>t we see something like that in <u+201c>top gun<u+201d>? yep, head-up displays, or huds, are moving from jet fighters to automobiles, minus the missiles. the navdy makes a compelling pitch for always driving while looking up: on a highway, if you look down at your phone for four seconds, you<u+2019>ve missed an entire football field of potential hazards. cruising toward the future in my old volkswagen for a month, i<u+2019>ve been happy that navdy at least puts information where my eyes need it. but as a robotic co-pilot, it<u+2019>s as unreliable as siri. and as a safety device, the navdy still needs to answer the not-so-hypothetical question: will it ever be ok to tweet while driving? ready or not, the internet-connected <u+201c>dashtop<u+201d> computer is about to become more mainstream. a growing set of new vehicles, even the toyota prius, offer built-in huds that show speed and maps. navdy, a san francisco startup, made waves two years ago by selling 20,000 systems at $300 each in a pre-sale. they finally began shipping last week<u+2014>and selling for $800 apiece. that eyebrow-raising price is still less than the hud option in a new car, says navdy, and includes installation. navdy and forthcoming rivals such as roav and exploride bring modernity to older cars. like other connected car tech , the hardware draws power and vehicle data from an onboard diagnostics port (found on most cars made after 1996). the device sticks onto your dashboard, but lifts off to hide in your glove compartment. the first time i pulled out of the driveway with the navdy, i was in awe<u+2014>its display looks like a hologram. in reality, it<u+2019>s a projector beaming light toward a prism. it<u+2019>s more than 40 times brighter than a smartphone, so even driving straight into a sunset, you can see the navdy. images appear to hover about 6 feet out, and you can see them without refocusing your eyes. speed and other basic info are in your line of sight (once you adjust the device<u+2014>or yourself), making your actual dashboard redundant. among the view options are a virtual dashboard and a constantly moving map. navdy would be great if it didn<u+2019>t rely so much on your phone and your car. every time you turn on the car, there<u+2019>s a fair amount of clerical work, from making sure its app is running on your phone to making sure your phone connects to the car<u+2019>s audio system. the more fundamental problem: how do you interact with a display you can<u+2019>t touch? when you want to accept a call or hear a text message read aloud, you swipe your hand to the left or right. richer interactions are more of a pain. you have to use navdy<u+2019>s app on your phone to enter destinations. for other tasks, there<u+2019>s a wireless dial you strap to your steering wheel. it works like an old ipod clickwheel, tapping for menus or double-tapping for music info. navdy has its own backup gps, but it uses your phone for navigation. based on google maps, the guidance isn<u+2019>t perfect. on a drive through san francisco to ocean beach, i let it choose the path through neighborhoods i didn<u+2019>t know. it shows street names well in advance, but it doesn<u+2019>t say which lane to get in<u+2014>so i missed my turn into the beach parking lot. navdy thought i reached my destination, but i was actually heading down highway 1. driving got more uncomfortable when notifications (<u+201c>glances<u+201d>) started flowing in. i got a message from a friend once while driving. i swiped my hand left, and the navdy read it aloud. nice<u+2014>but replying took far more effort. the navdy makes you reply through siri, but siri got confused and a winky smiley face went to the wrong person. oops. the more i drove, the more i became accustomed to all navdy<u+2019>s info in my face. glances are turned off by default<u+2014>though it also has a mode (which i never dared use) which actually displays full text of notifications. certainly, no distractions would be best, but how is that any better than using a dash-mounted smartphone? navdy says all its modes comply with national highway traffic safety administration guidelines for distracted driving . though voluntary, they encourage <u+201c>systems that keep the driver<u+2019>s eyes on the road ahead as much as possible.<u+201d> the administration says it<u+2019>s researching head-up displays. navdy says its tech <u+201c>completely<u+201d> removes the need to look down at a phone or dashboard, citing internal eye-tracking studies, and that its controls are designed to keep driver hands on the steering wheel. that doesn<u+2019>t address what kinds of activities are appropriate for drivers, however. on a busy workday, my navdy screen filled with glances from twitter , facebook and instagram. yes, i chose to ignore them. no, i won<u+2019>t be tweeting from my windshield. when i got home, i turned off glances for my other apps, too. navdy<u+2019>s ceo doug simpson says it isn<u+2019>t the company<u+2019>s place to be a nanny, flagging potential dangers. driving with navdy feels like a future that hasn<u+2019>t quite arrived. it doesn<u+2019>t offer all the intelligence i<u+2019>d want, yet it doesn<u+2019>t keep things quite simple enough, either. that makes it hard to recommend, especially when its alternative is a $10 suction cup dashboard holster<u+2014>or just putting away the darn phone, taking a deep breath and paying attention to the road. write to geoffrey a. fowler at geoffrey.fowler@wsj.com
review: is there a safe way to text while driving? - wsj
geoffrey a. fowler