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Watch TV On Your Satnav

Posted by kdawson on from the stupid-goes-right-to-the-bone dept.

Barence writes "Satnav firm Mio is launching a device with an integrated TV tuner. The Mio Spirit range includes a digital television tuner that is intended to be used 'during breaks in the journey or at their final destination.' However, safety campaigners fear there's little to stop the television being used at the wheel. When the system is first turned on a warning message is displayed, telling the user not to watch television while driving. If this is ignored, a secondary warning message kicks in if the GPS chip detects the vehicle is moving at more than 5mph. But that's it!"

16 of 225 comments (clear)

  1. That's fine.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ..there is such a thing as personal responsibility and we don't need a nanny to babysit us all the time.

    Life is like Unix and you are the superuser. With that comes the power to 'rm -rf' the system.. intentionally or not.

    --iamnotayam

    1. Re:That's fine.. by Barny · · Score: 5, Funny

      Thats a first, a computer analogy to describe a car.

      --
      ...
      /me sighs
    2. Re:That's fine.. by Unipuma · · Score: 5, Informative

      Sadly, they are not on the road all on their own. And as much as I won't miss them if they drive into a ravine while watching TV, I'm a bit less happy if they're driving in the oncoming lane on the same road I'm driving (or more likely, in my lane while they are fiddling with the controls).

      (Kind of like I'm fine with them being superuser on their own system, but what do you do when they need to have modify rights to a network drive which also contains my work)

    3. Re:That's fine.. by johannesg · · Score: 5, Insightful

      ..there is such a thing as personal responsibility and we don't need a nanny to babysit us all the time.

      Life is like Unix and you are the superuser. With that comes the power to 'rm -rf' the system.. intentionally or not.

      --iamnotayam

      Nobody really cares if the driver kills himself while being terminally stupid. The problem is that they tend to take other people with them, people who did not have any part in their idiot choices. Your right to watch TV while driving does not override other people's right to live.

    4. Re:That's fine.. by Hognoxious · · Score: 4, Funny

      And if you kill someone, you can just restore him from a backup!

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    5. Re:That's fine.. by rastoboy29 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That is fine, except for the existence of nincompoops who are liable to rm -rf *you* or *me* while their texting or watching tv while driving.

      Some people should not be allowed to have root access sometimes.

      --
      expandfairuse.org
  2. Nice! by madfilipino · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Get shitty drivers and give them mobile phones to talk on so they become even shittier drivers. Now get those bastards to watch TV while talking and texting on their mobile phones and we'll have the shittiest drivers on the road. Hopefully, these bastards will kill themselves without killing others, making the road safer for everyone else.

    Oh well, back to reality.

  3. Re:First post? by Jurily · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I always thought that warning messages were more likely to get you killed in the 0.05s you spend pressing "ok" when you could have done the one thing you wanted to do.

    They'd be more effective to only let you use the TV in "radio mode", e.g. no video to distract you from the road.

  4. Re:Because if only.. by JaxTJ · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Absolutely. I used to have a 45-minute commute to work when I lived in New Jersey and I honestly can't remember the number of times that I was almost run into by someone in a 3-ton SUV that was talking or texting instead of driving.

    Japanese taxi drivers frequently have the TV playing on their nav units while driving, but they are among the safest drivers I've ever ridden with. I think two way communication is far more taxing to a driver's attention than a receive-only medium.

  5. Re:First post? by azior · · Score: 5, Funny

    Those poor morons...

  6. Re:TV while drivin is Darwin Award worthy... by IBBoard · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Exactly what I was thinking - there's a use case where you know your route but only want to carry one device and so entertain the other passengers by using it as the TV rather than using the SatNav (which you may need later) as a navigation device.

    Yeah, people watching TV while driving is a problem, but there are far more prevalent problems that'll cause just as many accidents: people doing 100Mph+ on Motorways with warnings of queuing ahead, people not indicating, people on mobile phones, etc.

  7. It's called... by Antony-Kyre · · Score: 4, Insightful

    wreckless driving, and it shouldn't be tolerated. Shouldn't anyone watching TV while driving lose their license?

    1. Re:It's called... by kobatan · · Score: 5, Funny

      Umm... it's called *reckless* driving!

      Wreckless driving is desirable.

      --
      "Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. Free men pull in all kinds of directions." -TP
  8. Re:First post? by lindseyp · · Score: 4, Informative

    I've been using TV-enabled satnavs here in Japan for many years. The law forces dealers to make the TV switch off when the car is moving.

    However most 3rd party fitters will bypass this restriction, and it's fairly common to see asshats driving round with the TV fully on.

    --
    j'ai découvert une démonstration vraiment admirable (de ce théorème général) que cette si
  9. Re:First post? by mcvos · · Score: 5, Funny

    Maybe they should do it as a HUD system, prjecting on the windscreen of the car.

    And then, when they feel the need to warn you, your entire windscreen goes opaque with a giant warning message.

  10. Re:First post? by imakemusic · · Score: 5, Funny

    Blue windscreen of death

    --
    Brain surgery - it's not rocket science!