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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.'"
OK, completely different technology. Similar premise. On vacation with my parents last December... My dad has a new Prius hybrid. He was so worried about that magic display in the center of the dash that showed his real time gas milegae that he was a damn hazard on the road. I very smoothly asked if I could drive the mighty hybrid for a while, much to his chagrin I drove us home most of the way from the airport and completely blew off the gas mileage statistics.
The problem today isn't all the gadgets we have to help us get where we're going, it is the fact that we simply don't have time to do a good job of going anywhere, any time, with any help (or none).
We're being inundated with ways of multi-tasking before we have established the abilities to off-load the major task - that of keeping ourselves and the rest of those around us alive to actually get where we're wanting/needing to be.
We should leave all these distractions (people in the next seat, cell-phones, books on tape, talk-radio, TV, fancy guidance systems, etc.) out of the vehicle until such time as the vehicle can do the driving while we do the rest.
Been there, done that, paid for the T-shirt
and didn't get it
Since the customerwants to do other things while driving and the customer is always right, I don't see the distraction factor going down no matter what kind of enhancements are made to the nav system.
My parents' recent purchase of a Buick Allure has this info centre feature with some settings you can fiddle around. The manual says you must put the gear in park before you can change the settings, and I think this is the best safety feature that GM had made. Now, I don't see a reason why the route for the NAV system should be set or modified while the car is in motion. The idea can also be applied here: Don't even let the driver create the distraction.
After a couple months using Tom Tom Bluetooth Navigator for Palm (Christmas present) mostly for fun at first, but last weekend on an out-of-town trip, I have to say that while you MIGHT be distracted looking at it (I certainly was at first), you aren't likely to be once you get used to it.
Here are a few random thoughts on this type of navigation:
1. End-to-end nav. Tell Tom Tom where you wanna go and don't look at it again. It warns you when turns are coming up (in a crisp Australian accent if you're using my settings (voice sounded clearer than the US English voices on my T3 speakser - still want John Cleese for it, though...)), and you can configure how early you want the turn warning.
2. Tom Tom for Palm is designed so you can navigate the GUI with a fingertip - no stylus needed. This keeps the fumble-factor way down.
3. Battery life is a killer - bluetooth GPS, speech, bright screen for daylight driving and a constantly-running app quickly deplete my T3's battery (which is about the lowest-capacity unit Palm has ever shipped on a good day). This means you're gonna have to use a power cord, which means more fumbling and distraction than you'd like. The cord falls out of the Palm just about anyplace I put the thing in the car.
4. You can mount the thing with a windshield mount in a "heads-up" spot on the dash. You still have a concentration/depth-of-field issue when focusing on the thing vs. the road ahead, but it's not awful.
5. It's safer than making snap judgements in traffic. Nice to know where you're going ahead of time. Seldom do I make a right turn from the left lane to follow directions now...
6. Several times I've looked longingly across a dead-end barricade or cul-de-sac sidewalk at what Tom Tom thinks is my next turn; visible, but inaccessible. It's not perfect (and I've heard this is endemic to GPS nav systems).
7. The killer part of this app: The pseudo 3D view of the road ahead is MUCH more communicative than the flat map view of say Street Atlas. Both work with my Bluetooth GPS, but Tom Tom is actually usable from the driver's seat.
Love my Tom Tom, YMMV.
The street pilot uses a suction cup to stick to my windshield, and has a chord that plugs into my cigarette lighter. The controls are simple, just a wheel and two buttons. It has a map that shows where I am. When it's not navigating, it shows my speed and direction. When it is navigating, it shows my estimated arrival time, and the distance to my next turn. It also speaks outloud with instructions like "Go 103 miles, then turn left." And then when you get close to the next turn it will say "Go 500 feet and then turn left." It's quick to glance up and see how far I have until I need to be concerned about getting ready to turn/exit. If I forget to tell it where I'm going before I leave, it takes me about 10 seconds to reach up and pick a location from my favorites. I can't imagine typing in an address while driving, but picking a location from a list is much less distracting than trying to read directions on paper while driving.
After getting my GPS, I decided to take an unfamiliar route back to college. I was able to keep my eyes on the road the whole time and I didn't get the least bit lost. Now I take it anytime I go someplace new, and I feel very confident that I'm a safer driver with it than without it.
I have a navigational system in my car that won't let you input most things while the car is in motion. It will allow some things, like "quick stop" which will route to nearby gas stations/restaurants/hospitals, but it'll only show a total of 5 - if you want to scroll to search further, you have to stop. You can also program in any of the previous 5 destinations. The processes are easy enough that it's not a distraction, although maybe I'm just better at multitasking than most people.
What irritates me, though, is if I have a passenger in the car, they can't do anything to the nav while I'm driving. If we suddenly realize we have the wrong address while we're on the freeway? Sorry, can't change it, even though the passenger could just as well do it. I wish they had some kind of weight sensor in the seat to allow that.
I just bought a new Jeep two months ago with the RB-1 (made by Alpine) GPS navigation radio. My experience is that I am more attentive when driving! I no longer need to worry about navigating or reading maps because the GPS is handling the navigation, so I can focus totally on driving. There is no need to be looking at the GPS because it always gives you verbal warnings well in advance of the next turn.
So, I've got a Garmin Streetpilot 2610. Last year I drove from Mountain View (where I live) to Las Vegas, without any maps, purely by putting (I think 3) waypoints - ("yes, I do want to go through Death Valley and Yosemite" etc.), a start and an end destination.
...
I've done the trip before, but I wouldn't say I was familiar with it, and I tried to see different things this time anyway - we went somewhat out of our way to Monument Valley on the way back, 'cos that's fairly spectacular
The thing performs perfectly - I use it a lot. The confidence it brings when you know it will work out the best route and take you that way is just great. No panic if (when) you miss a junction on a freeway because you were in the wrong lane. No problem if you miss a turn in a city you don't know. I can't praise the thing enough.
My parents came over to visit - never been to the US before. Because I had to work that week, they went on a trip down the coast, with the GPS guiding them all the way. 10 minutes instruction was all it took to get them started, and they were experts after a few days, putting their own waypoints in etc. You have to understand that my parents really *are* VCR-challenged...
I'd never try and put in directions when the car was moving though - just pull over, type the details, and drive on afterwards. News-flash: driving without looking at the road (no matter what gizmo is involved) is not a good idea...
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Relying on technology without any clue will always cause problems. Remember that example years ago when they gave inaccurate calculators to a class of students who were taking a test and only one of them questioned the answers that were coming from his calculator?
My roomate used to drive 18 wheel trucks cross-country. On her first trip, she partnered with another new driver who used to work in the IT field. Needless to say, he loved his technology and ran out and got a GPS card and software for his laptop. He thought this was incredibly cool and paid very close attention to his GPS.
The first problem came when they were switching freeways. Even though he knew he should get over to the right hand side because he knew the exit was coming up, he wouldn't move over until the GPS software told him to. One time he almost missed an exit because the GPS software was a little late in telling him to move over (map inaccuracy, GPS inaccuracy, whatever). Let's just say he was lucky it was late and there was no cop around, because he'd have lost his license and/or caused an accident.
The next time, my roomate was sleeping when she was awakened by city traffic. His mapping software had told him the fastest route was on surface streets, so he obediently got off the freeway. The road narrowed from 8 lanes to four to two. When she looked out from behind the sleeping curtain, he was driving 30 miles per hour while staring at his laptop--not even looking at the road (and, remember, you don't necessarily stop so fast with a 30,000 pound trailer). She decided that if she wanted to live the night, she'd better get out there and get him out of the mess he'd gotten himself into.
Finally, he got completely confused when there was construction and suddenly the place his GPS told him to exit was closed. He had no idea what to do, so he just kept driving. When my roomate woke up a couple of hours later and asked him where they were, he had no clue and the GPS wasn't much help either. She took over the wheel, got off on the next exit, turned the truck back around, and followed the plain ol' paper map to get back to exit he was supposed to take (it was open on the eastbound leg)
When they finally got back, she decided to drive solo. He decided to become a Driver Manager...
Now, in the guy's defense, he'd obviously gotten hold of some crappy software which, at the very least, didn't account for the fact that the vehicle he was driving was not a passenger car. But he became so fixated on doing what the software told him that he didn't pay attention to what the road signs, his training, or just plain ol' common sense told him to do. He would just slavishly follow the computer's instructions.
I've seen MapQuest have the same effect, too. MapQuest seems to like to save you a couple tenths of a mile by making you "drive the hypotenuse." Turn left, turn right, turn left, turn right. If you just zoom the map out a little, you'll see you can just drive a quarter-mile, turn left, and drive another quarter-mile and be there.
Many new cars these days have passenger seat-belt indicators. When a passenger is sitting in the seat, the indicator blinks until the seat belt is buckled. It's really annoying if you throw something heavy on your passenger side seat. I would think that the same sensor could be used to allow input while driving only if the passenger is in the seat.
Honda's factory systems have that. Very star-trekish to bark out commands like "Radio! Tune 620 AM!" or "Audio off!" or "Find nearest gas station!"
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
You guys must have some really crappy navi systems in the US if this is a problem. I've rented plenty of cars in Tokyo, had no idea how to get where I was going, but the navi got me safe and sound, and no going the wrong way down a one-way street. Almost all new cars in Tokyo come with a navi system because it's almost impossible to find where you need to be on a map.
Here the maps are even updated in realtime to show you where construction is that day, where gas stations and eateries are. I hope when I get back something as good as what I can get in Japan is available.
Tea and kung-fu. Life is good. Rising Phoenix
Blame the user! Yes, that's one way of looking at it. Another perspective is that the product designers could have built the systems in a way so as not to encourage activities that distract the driver, or at least not to tempt the driver to fiddle with accessories on the road. Or--best option--hire aesthetes and HCI experts to design your mapping systems to be intuitive and predictive enough not to require the driver's full attention to operate. Some of the dash-mounted interactive mapping devices I've seen ought to be criminal, they're such a frustration to use.
Responsibility may lie ultimately with the end user, especially for having chosen such terribly-designed products. But many problems could be avoided if only automakers put some thought into how real human beings interact with their systems.
Me, I believe in capitalism. I pay other people to do the dirty work.