Safe Speed Forums

This is debatable
Agreed, but the exact same problem exists for stick-on-Garfields and other assorted crap (I beleive there is actually a police vehicle defect code for something like "Mascot positioned where it is likely to cause danger or obstruction")
At least you have to actually read the manual to find out how to disable the thing that prevents you from entering in route information while the vehicle is moving.
Well, the law about blocking zone A is pretty clear IIIRC. Most of these satnavs are bigger than an old-shape 10p piece so they must fall foul of it. Enforcement of non-speed related laws is always a problem here, so good luck with that one.
(I'm sure given time and resources, I could develop some software for a backlit LCD-satnav-in-stupid-place-camera, though it may only work at night)

My old satnave gave me a warning a 1.7 miles, then another at 0.7 miles, then at 300 feet. I'd say the situation you describe is more likely to happen when said numpty notices they're just passing the 300 yard marker.


I can't speak for the forum, but I always thought this forum wasn't about whether something was legal or not, but whether it's safe. eg. 75 MPH is illegal but often safe. If these devices have an overall safety benefit then that's a good thing. If we can make them safer still by stopping people putting them in stupid places then that's an even better thing, but I doubt the latter is really possible so I'm happy to accept the former.

The problem is in the enforcement. For example you might think that sticking the satnav to the top of the cowling that keeps light off the instrument cluster is a bad idea, but if the driver is 6'6" and drives a car with a long bonnet, that satnav may only be obscuring their view of their own bonnet, even though it's technically zone A. So if you start enforcing this, said driver will get a tug, explain to the officer why it's not unsafe, get let off, get a tug 3 days later, repeat ad infinitum until they get fed up and relocate the satnav to somewhere in the centre console meaning they have to take their eyes off the road for longer in order to check the damn thing.

OTOH, the exact same car with the satnav in the exact same position being driven by a 4' dwarf and suddenly the placement becomes stupidly dangerous.

Can you reasonably expect a copper to work all that out while they glance at the instalation during an overtake on the motorway?



Whilst I agree with you, I'm less convinced that what you want to acheive is actually acheiveable that is all.

do you have proof of that or are you just talking of your own personal experience?


true you haven't said it directly so could you enlighten us on how exactly you plan to remove the menace of people staring at their satnavs without actually banning them. (Do people really stare at them? Mine speaks to me so I don't even have the map showing most of the time.)

Johnsher, I don't want to appear rude but I feel you are taking the thread off-topic. So I'll give this one more attempt at bringing it back to the point:

The topic is - LCD displays cause a new distraction encouraging the driver to refocus and not look at the road. While GPS supposedly provides safety benefits too I believe the distraction aspect is potentially as bad as using a mobile phone. Simple. That is my contention.

I don't have a plan for fixing this and never claimed to. Banning things was never on my agenda. I didn't create the problem, merely tried to highlight it as a new and rising risk. What I believe is important is to seek clarification on an issue of general poor use and massive proliferation of equipment that I feel will ultimately cause some accidents.

I do see double-standards regarding "cameras distract v GPS is OK" (remembering that I hate cameras almost as much as Paul Smith does) because GPS is a distraction with potential benefits whereas cameras have little or no safety benefit but are also a device imposed on the driver by the government.

If GPS was compulsory I would be willing to bet that there would be hundreds of us out there researching how many accidents it contributed to then protesting the imposition. Because we chose it, almost nobody is looking at that aspect.

I think you are right Paul. On balance I find my sat nav system makes life easier. It doesn't need looking at very often or for long periods, as a good deal of the information comes from the audible instructions. I'm sure it is better than looking for street names or trying to read maps. In any case it is sometimes quite difficult to find a suitable place to stop and look at a map. We tend to want to carry on and sort it out as we go, but this can be seriously distracting from the driving task.

My conclusion is that overall sat. nav. systems are a benefit.

Best wishes all,
Dave.

1. Jags have the manufacturer's version and not a problem.

2. have Origins on dash and gadget is small and does not cause any SMIDSY or obscure any view of road ahead/.

3. We do have Tom Toms on dash of older cars ... the Moggies etc - and we do not find these get in the way of our vision of the road ahead - and as Observer points out .. gadget's value as tool and precision instrument comes into its own when you are in immediate vicinity of end destination-
though Wildy did manage to get lost when taking an elderly relative to visit an old pal, She had not taken the Tom Tom on that occasion and asked a policeman... who recognised her as the auburn haired Wildy with the accent you cut with knife and gave her a police escort...

4. Same with the Stag...

5. We use these gadgets when cycling and walking on the Fells... and jolly handy they are too!

Obviously - we will refer to traditional maps as well and we do plan routes before we set off... but the gadgets tell us of things we cannot know in advance.. such as one-way systems...

But I cannot agree that they cause SMIDSY or distract at all. You glance in same way as you would into mirror and if it bleeps for a scam ... you glance at speedo and correct as required if a slight blip there

_________________
If you want to get to heaven - you have to raise a little hell!

Smilies are contagious
They are just like the flu
We use our smilies on YOU today
Now Good Causes are smiling too!

KEEP SMILING
It makes folk wonder just what you REALLY got up to last night!

Smily to penny.. penny to pound
safespeed prospers-smiles all round! !
But the real message? SMILE.. GO ON ! DO IT! and the world will smile with you!
Enjoy life! You only have the one bite at it.

if asking for solutions to your problem is off-topic then I do wonder why you bothered raising it... but hey, ho it's your topic.


once again, not if it's used properly. So I guess what you're saying is that we should tell people that they need to pay attention to the road while driving.

I don't see any double standard at all. For a start, sat nav isn't threatening. Sat nav isn't supported by false safety messages. Sat nav isn't used by the state against the people. Sat nav doesn't affect the relationship between police and public. I could go on and on and on...

Are there any others around here who share Curmudgeon's fears?

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

These comparisons mark the lacuna in your reasoning.

Speed cameras are an additional distraction while satnav, although potentially distracting, substitutes for the distraction of conventional route finding.

It is inevitable that some drivers, some of the time, will have to 'route find'. Road signs and street name plates don't talk to drivers. Therefore, it's self-evident that satnav systems have potential benefits, all else being equal. That's it. End of argument.

Clearly we'll have to agree to disagree since there is not a single correct ultimate answer to this one. I don't believe for a moment that it's the end of the argument (let's change that to rational discussion) at all. But as Paul will tell us, trying to convert others to one's way of thinking is a long and difficult process.
I still hope to be proven wrong, only time will tell.

Ist just a tool in car... funnily enough - we do not glue eyes to it - but probably glance in same way as we glance in mirrors or to check speedo on gradient

Ist not a distraction for greater majority ... greater distraction ist looking at bridges for vans und so was...

_________________
Nicht ganz im Lot!
Ich setze mich immer wieder in die Nesseln! Der Mad Doc ist mein Mann! Und ich benutzte seinen PC!

UND OUR SMILEYS? Smile ... und the the world smiles with you.
Smiley guy seen when you read
Fine me for Safe Speed
(& other good causes..)

Greatest love & Greatest Achievements Require Greatest Risk
But if you lose the driving plan - don't lose the COAST lesson.
Me?
Je ne regrette rien!

So adding a new lesser evil distraction is OK because it's not as evil as the camera distraction? Incidentally, checking a speedo is much faster and easier than reading a moving GPS display.
Selective "blindness of convenience" has been all over this discussion since it started. I'm still working out how even Paul Smith can rate GPS as an overall benefit and, to my mind, rather blandly dismiss the safety hazards while having in the past written that moving images are clearly a dangerous distraction. How come suddenly the skilled drivers are more than happy to credit all drivers with the abilities required to use GPS equipment safely? Normally you'd all be hammering the numpties for being incompetent and having weak observation skills.
WildCat, you are probably a good driver who's capable of using GPS constructively and safely. Most people are not as good as you and cannot afford to have a new thing in the form of a computer screen taking up their attention. Please see Gizmo's forum at http://www.safespeed.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5717
"80% of accidents down to driver inattentiveness."
YOU may not glue your eyes to it but far too many drivers out there are not equipped to even drive a car let alone drive one with a computer display stuck in the windscreen.

Speak for yourself. I prefer to read my speed off a digital display than off the speedo dial as it's quicker to do and easier to process, but then I also struggle with analogue watches, converting the time into digital-style (eg.11:39) in my head, then if someone is asking me for the time, it then gets converted a second time into traditional format (eg. 20 to 12)

No-one is arguing that it's still a distraction and, perhaps, a lesser of two evils but overall I beleive it's an improvement overall, and we should look into ways of making the technology safer still (ie. improving the voice prompts, speed sensitivity so it can tell if you're about to miss your turn and remind you before the point is reached where someone dives across 3 lanes of traffic and the chevroned bit because they can't be arsed to continue to the next junction

Lum, I think reading a digital display faster than an anologue dial puts you in a very small minority, but that's not the point.

GPS devices have launched on to the market without any useful supporting legislation or studies into their impact on safety. I am not condoning more minldess legislation, I am however trying to persuade people to spare a second or two to think about the potential dangers, especially in town, (turn left here!, look at screen, don't look out of window, wipe out pedestrian) instead of blindly assuming that GPS is just "a good thing". It has benefits but it also has drawbacks and serious genuine hazards. Legislation is years behind the technology and the aggressive marketing. The police have no coherent idea of what is legal and what isn't regarding placement of LCD screens so they just ignore and accept it. It's simply plain dangerous in the wrong hands or sometimes even the right ones.

I agree in part at least. People that f%&^ing stupid and inconsiderate will be just as f%&^ing stupid and inconsiderate with GPS as before they had GPS. Giving them another thing to think about and look at is not going to make them safer.

And I agree with you that a study may well be a good idea, but how do you do a fair study here?

Morpheus (makes of the Geodessey and Road Pilot camera detectors) used to proclaim on their site that a study had shown that radar detector users are five times less likely to have an accident. Is this because the radar detector is reducing the distraction of looking for cameras, or because the kind of person who buys a radar detector is the kind of person who needs their licence for their job and therefore does a lot more driving, so is more experienced than their peers.

The same problem will happen with any GPS study, although the gap is narrowing. A few years back I acquired a Garmin StreetPilot III at a cost of nearly a grand. Manufacturer fitted ones still cost 2 grand, these aren't cheap toys that you fit to any old car, you only get one if you need one and you only need one if you do a lot of driving.

Ok so they are a lot cheaper now, in the region of £200, but I can still think of plenty of other things I'd rather do with £200 if I didn't drive for a living. The point being, your sample is already skewed.


And you're never going to correct the driving of the kind of person who things that cutting 3 lanes + chevrons is a good idea, not unless you manage to ban them (which wont happen unless they speed) so I would argue that a device that keeps reminding them that their junction is coming up is an improvement.

Remind me to show you my Car PC sometime, in addition to the distractions you have already covered, I could quite legally compose an SMS or eMail on the thing using the on screen keyboard, while hurtling down the motorway. Of course I am never going to (unless parked), but the facility is there. I'm sure you will want to smash it into tiny pieces

As it happens I came across a news story about this very subject today, at http://computerworld.com/mobiletopics/m ... 71,00.html

In summary an insurance company study found that when used incorrectly satnav can be more distracting than using a paper map at the wheel. Unfortunately there are no details of what the study actually entailed so commenting on the accuracy is difficult.

Edit: just found the same study had already been posted in another thread at http://www.safespeed.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6077

Ok, that's pretty dumb, also every satnav I've used doesn't let you do that without finding some buried menu option (usually called passenger mode or something to that effect) to enable

Guilty as charged. It works, it may not always be the quickest route but it's pretty good, there's a definate time saving over faffing with a map here. Great if you do on-site call outs

I'd disagree. Trying to keep a map the correct way up and not obscuring your instrument cluster while driving is going to be more distracting than trying to view the satnav map. Programming a satnav is a different matter of course.

Newsflash: using maps incorrectly is distracting, so is using satnav incorrectly

Thank you both for the last couple of posts.
I am not trying to destroy GPS as it's clearly a useful tool when used appropriately. What I am trying to do is highlight the potential dangers of the additional distraction caused to average or sub-average driver (i.e. 60% or more of the road population.)
For once the USA is actually ahead of the UK here - their insurance copanies in particular have been pinpointing "distraction accidents" for many years now and have identified GPS as being a signifiant factor in a number of accident cases.
I don't want to become one of those cases so I'm understandably worried about Joe or Jane Average sticking one of these devices in their windscreen then rear-ending me or my partner because they're too busy looking at the computer and not paying attention to the real world - you know, that thing outside you can see through the window. It's bad enough having parents paying more attention to the kids in the "people carrier" than to driving so adding a GPS screen to their attention load is hardly likely to improve the situation.

The question is, how many of the people in GPS distraction accidents would have just found something else to distract them if the GPS were removed, and then had the accident anyway.

Children in the people carrier is a classic example. I've seen one lady trying to entertain her child by doing the hokey kokey, with both hands, while piloting a people carrier through the Birkenhead tunnel (well to be more specific, my passenger saw most of it, I just saw my lane being encroached on by a bloody people carrier despite numerous "stay in lane" signs that are actually enforced if you get caught changing lanes.

Is it an additional distraction, or just replacing other distractions?

I agree with you, Lum, I reckon that people drive with an "acceptable risk factor" attitude.

So informing people that map-reading / putting-on-make-up / shaving / washing-hair / assembling-thermo-nuclear-devices while driving is distracting and potentially dangerous is probably not going to change their behaviour... they are already aware of the risk.

Whether they decide to take the risk or not is a different matter, probably worthy of a super-long separate topic, very large and expensive hardcover book probably found in the psychology section at the local university, or one of those mega-two-part Horizon documentaries .