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In-Car Navigation Systems Too Distracting?
Lam1969 writes "A survey released by an insurance company shows that drivers with in-car navigation systems are more likely to lose concentration than drivers who unfold a map while driving. From the article: 'One in 10 motorists with navigation systems set off on their journeys without bothering to program their route, and more than half admitted that they then had to take their eyes off the road to input the details while driving. Nearly one in eight did not even bother to check out a route they were unfamiliar with and simply relied on the technology to get them to their destination.'"
This is true for any device used in the car such as phones, swapping CDs, adjusting seats, playing with mirrors, etc.
Many car manufacturers are moving towards what BMW has done for the last few model years with in-dash navigation systems: restricting input to when the car is in park. This makes inputing an address to be very troublesome especially when a passenger can do it but it prevents situations like these.
My in-laws have a Chevrolet Trailblazer with the nav system. You cannot access any of the menus or buttons while the car is moving. Even the passenger cannot override the system. Since auto manufacturers typically reuse systems like this through out all their cars, presumably all Chevyrolet models are in the same...er...boat.
It depends on your system.
My new car has a GPS and it speaks the directions to me: when a turn is coming up, how long until the next turn, etc. Sure, when a turn is coming up a zoomed-up maps shows me the turn, but I rarely look. To me, the voice is what counts.
I'm also prohibited from doing things while driving: entering addresses, selecting destinations (except for "Home", etc. AND, if I want to do what I can I have voice activation: "zoom in," "zoom out," etc.
If it didn't have the voice feature, then I could see it be a distraction. But now, I don't have to look too carefully at street signs trying to find the right turn which was a MAJOR distraction.
If it's a Toyota nav system (and the five "quick stop" things sounds like it is) -- at least, from 2004 on -- your passenger can override the lock-out by doing the following:
- Go to the map menu screen
- Select "volume"
- Tap the upper-left corner then the lower-left corner; repeat three times.
- On the screen that pops up, press and hold "override" until it beeps
- Tap "back"
Now, until you turn the car off, your passenger should be able to use the nav system just fine. You will need to select "guide" after selecting your route, since it will no longer automatically start guiding you when the car starts rolling.
I've used both the Garmin Streetpilot 2610 and the Lowrance iWay 500c in-car GPS systems pretty extensively while driving. Primarily, I rely on them to locate customers for my on-site service business, but I also used the Lowrance for a brief stint as a courier, plus used both on a couple of longer trips out of state.
Even though I always try to enter my destination info before actually driving off - I often get in situations where I need to make some changes "on the fly". It's not always really practical to pull off to the side of the road someplace, just to tell it about a new stop you found out you need to get to along the way. As other people said, much of the problem with trying to use a GPS while driving is lack of familiarity with the interface. With mine mounted on my dash in just the right place, I can glance at it quickly or press a few buttons on it quickly without really taking my eyes off the road. But my biggest issue with both units I've used has been an imperfect touch-screen. Sometime you press something and it doesn't respond, or it selects the item above or below the one you tried to pick. Distractions like that can really cause problems.
I also wish they had a little more accurate map data in them! Even though I always bought the latest available map updates for both units I've owned, I've always had numerous problems with it not knowing the correct exit numbers for given highway exits, and cases where it indicated an on-ramp was on my left when it was really coming up on my right (or vice-versa).
They also tend to be bad with long highway exit ramps that split off into 2 different directions at the end of them. (EG. It will tell you "Exit right in 1/4th. mile onto exit 96/97A." But if you don't know for sure if the next instruction is going to be taking 97A vs. 96, it won't tell you until the last few seconds if you need to turn "right" or "left" when the exit forks off in two different directions!)
The Lowrance iWay 500c in particular has been unreliable with "points of interest". I've entered names of restaurants I was looking for, only to be led right up to the driveway of someone's house! (My guess is, they somehow mixed up the restaurant owner's home and business addresses, and took me to the owner's home.) This is especially disturbing considering they use Navteq map data, which is pretty much an "industry standard" for MANY in-car GPS systems.