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NHTSA Suggestion Would Cripple In-Car GPS Displays
bricko writes "The recently issued National Highway Transportation Safety Agency guidelines for automakers to minimize distraction for in-vehicle electronics included a proposal to freeze maps on navigation systems. No more scrolling maps...just static pictures. 'Every current installed navigation system uses the car as a fixed point, and shows the map moving around it. NHTSA wants that changed so as to keep the map fixed. Even showing the position of the car moving on the map could be considered a dynamic image. The recommendation seems to suggest that the position of the car could only be updated every couple of seconds. Likewise, the map could be refreshed once the car has left the currently displayed area. This recommendation would essentially make navigation unusable. The system could still give an auditory warning for the next turn, but without being able to glance down at the map and see how close the next street is would likely lead to a lot of missed turns and resultant frustration.'"
Why not....
I've driven through and watch nearly 3/4 of the original and TNG Star Trek series. It has surprisingly minimal effect on driving. The location of the viewing unit is really what's key and an understanding that you can simply rewind easily if you miss a scene of interest. No, I wouldn't do it with a high action movie like Transformers.
But the location if placed central to driver's view retains peripheral sensory perception, and thus enables you to respond to vehicle movement. The real problem here is the idiots who moved the GPS from in front of the driver, where it should be, to the side/center console, in the name of safety - and in fact created far more danger.
*shrugs* If I need GPS, I use my cell phone. It has current maps, and doesn't require me to buy a $200 update every few months so I'm up to date.
I also stuff it in the cup holder and just listen to the auditory commands, if I'm using it for navigation. The screen *is* a distraction.If I want to study the route, I'll do it when the car isn't moving.
Agreed, so the real question is what is preventing people from using their cell phones as dynamic GPS in the future, or is the NHTSA going after ALL devices with GPS technology and guidance software (i.e. even a laptop with Microsoft Streets and Trips)? I doubt their reach will go that far, but anything short of that is basically pointless.
Actually, to that end, I'm a bit surprised that the NHTSA isn't suggesting that the in-dash navigation systems should blank the screen while the car is moving. That would make things significantly safer, I think..
Ah, no, that would make things significantly more worthless. a GPS navigation system without a dynamic visual aide has basically been reduced to the value of a paper map. Might have fixed the problem, but you're sure not going to sell too many $3000 navigation packages on cars.
they could even make it so that if it's pulled out and facing the passenger seat instead of the driver, the screen unblanks and updates, so that a passenger can give directions.
Or the driver could just pull it out themselves and lay it on the passenger seat and use it anyway. Oh, the tech won't turn on because it doesn't sense a passenger (weight sensor tied to the airbag system)? No problem, I'll just set my backpack in the front seat, that usually does the trick.
Try and idiot-proof something, the world will build a better idiot. The real answer here to curb distracted driving is to punish appropriately and ENFORCE IT. Threatening someone with a $200 ticket doesn't mean shit if it's empty threats 99% of the time.
If you can't read a map but rely on POV views, I don't want you on the roads without special dispensation and training. You have no spatial awareness, and are a danger to others.
I agree with you in spirit, but seriously? Reading a map has largely become a "legacy" skill like basket-weaving or buggy-whip repair. Not knowing how to read a map doesn't (automatically) make people stupid, it just means they never learned to read a map.
People don't use technologies to make things they know how to do easier, they use them so they won't have to learn something in the first place.
Learning takes time. We can either use our time to learn higher-level tasks and let the machines do the grunt-work for us, or we can spend it running through pointless exercises over and over and over.
I think the best example of this comes from the age-old schoolboy's complaint about math - "Why do we have to learn this stuff, we'll never use it!". And in all fairness, they won't. The vast majority of people need nothing beyond basic 6th-grade arithmetic. A few of the skilled trades require some basic geometry. Hell, I work as a programmer, and although my "hobby" coding draws heavily on my math background (particularly linear algebra and differential), the work I actually get paid for only rarely requires even simple trig (and if you remember SOHCAHTOA, that about covers it). On the flip side of that, as I find myself doing a lot of SQL these days, I would call my formal math training, even at the college level, wholly inadequate for thinking in terms of set-based logic.
Personally, I would say that we need to spend less time teaching "the three Rs", and more time teaching them how to live in the modern world - How to make (and stick to) a budget; how to use a computer to find less-kosher content without getting pwnd; how to read food labels and prepare a basically nutritious meal with under a thousand calories (and how many miles you need to jog to burn off anything over that); basic cell-phone etiquette (and I would say that applies to the parent topic, as it largely applies to all use of "gadgets" at inappropriate times). Skills we all really need.
I very much believe in the value of a well-rounded education, but let's face it, burger-flippers don't need Chaucer.
... our stand-alone GPS has the option to either orient the map in direction of travel or orient the map towards North. The latter is bloody confusing and not preferred.
That seems to vary from person to person. I have a GPS gadget that also has that option. I tried the "up is forward" scheme for a while, and found it confusing, so I switched back to "up is north", which I personally find much easier to understand. This is probably related to my wife's observation that I almost always seem to know which direction I'm going, and she doesn't understand how I do that. I don't either, but at least I don't try to impose my preferred method on others who don't have an innate sense of direction.
There are a number of other such sensual differences among people. Among musicians, for example, some people hear the absolute pitch of notes ("perfect pitch"), while others don't, but hear musical intervals well ("relative pitch"). There's a long-running debate over which is better. Perfect pitch means you can pick up your instrument and join in without needing to ask (or experiment to determine) the key. But people like that tend to be really confused if someone plays something in a "wrong" key; the relative-pitch people don't hear anything unusual about this, and often routinely play things in whatever key is best for the others. This can come in really handy if you're backing up singers.
The best conclusion is that there are advantages and disadvantages to either approach, and you should learn to take advantage of whichever works for you. I'd consider a GPS that only does "up is forward" to be a crappy, annoying product, and I wouldn't buy it. And in general, I'd want one that implements both schemes, for situations where I'd like someone else to use it (e.g. as the navigator while I drive).
Actually, the idea of a passenger doing the navigating is one of the best ways of shooting down all the schemes such as this one. A good GPS system is one that the navigator can easily jigger to match their preferred way of doing things (including things like changing font size for different visual acuities), and then change them again quickly when someone else takes over the navigation task. We should be pushing for GPS gadgets that are good at this, with many modes of operation that are easy to change, and not for limitations that decrease their usefulness.
(I recently was driving with a passenger from China who wasn't very good at English. I quickly changed my Garmin Nüvi to speak Mandarin, handed it to him, and the trip went well. I left it that way for a few days afterward, to get more familiar with Mandarin direction words, but this really annoyed my wife when she used the car for something. So she got even by setting it to speak Arabic. Then I changed it to Dutch, just for fun. But not all of its settings are so easy to find and change. ;-)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.