Although texting with Google Glass while driving is a clear distraction, a new study has found those texting with the head implement exceeded smartphone users in regaining control of their vehicles after a traffic incident.

The study, conducted by a research team from the University of Central Florida in cooperation with the Air Force Research Laboratory, was the first scientific look at using Google Glass to text while driving.

"Texting with either a smartphone or Glass will cause distraction and should be avoided while driving," said UCF researcher Ben Sawyer, in a news release. He noted that "Glass did help drivers in our study recover more quickly than those texting on a smartphone. We hope that Glass points the way to technology that can help deliver information with minimal risk."

According to the National Safety Council, cell-phone use while driving leads to at least 1.6 million crashes each year.

So, it's not surprising that, along with the emergence of Glass and competitive gadets, several states are considering banning drivers from wearing such technologies altogether.

Sawyer, a specialist in the areas of experimental psychology, industrial engineering and human factors, and who for years has been examining distractions and how they impact human-machine interactions, conducted the new study at UCF's MIT2 Laboratory.

He and his team set up the experiment with 40 individuals in their 20s, each of whom drove in a car simulator with either Glass or a smartphone and during the exercise was forced to react to a vehicle ahead slamming on its brakes.

Researchers compared the reactions while the participants were text-messaging on each device with those while study subjects just drove without multitasking.

It was shown that those using Glass were no better at hitting their brakes in time, but appeared to recover from the experience -- and resume driving more normally -- more quickly than the others.

"While Glass-using drivers demonstrated some areas of improved performance in recovering from the brake event, the device did not improve their response to the event itself," Sawyer said. "More importantly, for every measure we recorded, messaging with either device negatively impacted driving performance. Compared to those just driving, multitaskers reacted more slowly, preserved less headway during the brake event -- and subsequently adopted greater following distances."

The study concluded Glass still causes distraction to drivers, even though the headset gives drivers the option of using head movements and voice commands to view and respond to text messages, avoiding need to use clumsy thumbs.

Bottom line, said Sawyer: don't trade your smartphone in for Google Glass because, if you think it will make texting safer behind the wheel, it won't; at least not for now.

"As distractive influences threaten to become more common and numerous in drivers' lives, we find the limited benefits provided by Glass a hopeful sign of technological solutions to come," he said.