Samsung Smart Windshield

10th April 2016

HUD | Email | Messaging | Smartphone | Yamaha

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Here's one of those solutions that's looking for a problem. Except that this solution will probably sooner or later create more problems than it solves.

The idea, developed by Samsung and Yamaha, is that your smartphone receives a message or satnav information and projects it onto your motorcycle windscreen. Then you can field calls from mum and dad, or slavishly follow a route, or play chess matches with your mate in Vladivostok or whatever.

To illustrate the concept, Samsung has created a YouTube video which suggests that this Smart Windshield is "a new concept in road safety" and "a revolution for young motorbike riders".

Note the word "young". Presumably anyone above the age of forty and/or with grey in their beard would know better than to muck around with this piece of technotrash.

To begin with, it's not actually a smart windshield. Rather, it's a windshield with a display screen in the position where the instruments would normally live. Therefore, the display is well below your normal line of sight.

Secondly, Samsung makes the foolish suggestion that you ought to be receiving phone messages, emails or studying street plans whilst on the move instead of keeping your full attention on the road

Of course, techno-junkies will perhaps see it differently. But for us at Sump, all information isn't good and timely information, and smart riders will choose to pick up their messages when they pull over at the roadside, or arrive at their destination.

As for satnav, if you really need it, these days you can have the information piped straight to your ear rather than flash up on the dash. Riding defensively doesn't mean watching out only for traffic. It means keeping a tight rein on the stuff going on inside your head too.

Marks out of then for this one? Zero.

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