Not true, countered Christopher Wickens, a professor at Colorado State University and one of the leading experts in the country in safe use of head-up displays for transportation. Dr. Wickens said that the head-up displays used by airplanes show only information critical to flying, like an outline of the runway or the horizon, and crucially, that information is often displayed as a visual overlay with the actual runway or horizon. By contrast, a head-up display in the car that gives nondriving information that is out of alignment with the road is the worst of two worlds, Dr. Wickens said. It is clutter, contributing to potential failure and distraction contributing to potential failure.