Safe Speed Forums

My apologies of this topic has already been covered.

I am increasingly concerned about the distraction potential of LCD displays (dedicated GPS nav and also PDAs) I see stuck on so many windscreens. While driving at night these things are especially and painfully obvious in huge numbers of vehicles. Dear all, please help me answer these questions:

Is it legal to have what amounts to a bright TV screen in the driver's view?

If so, why bother having a stone chip check in the "A zone" for the MOT test when a driver can now apparently stick a 5 inch diagonal video display anywhere in the window?

Are there any stats yet on "distraction accidents" relating to these devices?

Are they better / the same / worse than mobile phones in this regard? (Some of them are mobile phones!)

Do they have to be declared on insurance documents, maybe as a modification?

What do the few remaining traffic police have to say about them?

I must say I don't find my sat nav distracting. It (tomtom) has a night setting with dark colours and reduced brightness. I have it in the corner of the dashboard top and, in general, don't look at it much - I pay more attention to the voice messages. It's also not that big.

I suspect it is all down to how these things are used. For me, it saves me having to look around in strange urban areas (I visit at lot of cities where I need to find University campuses/carparks) which enables to concentrate more on my driving. That is mainly what I bought it for.

I just checked with traffic plice who say that there is nothing specific to say these devices can't be used but they should not hinder the driver's view. It's apparently subjective based only on the assessment of the officer who stops a vehicle.
I don't normally like the idea of adding legislation but I think a very big one is being missed here. I wonder what the DfT view will be after a big pile up is attributed to distraction by GPS.

I got stopped in Bedford at night with a tomtom go mounted in centre of screen, two officers, women driving and a man. They were quite jovial about it women said she'd stopped me out of "curiousity" about what it was!, they both had a look said it was cool, bloke said might be better mounting it on the right hand side next to door pillar, he said trafiic might be a bit "funny" about it.

The irony was I was lost ! Right road but wrong side of a one-way system to where I needed to be. The map data in them is sometimes out of date i've found.

They do have a "night" mode with reduces the brightness/glare somewhat but agree still a distraction, you can also put it on audio only if you wish.

I hope the subjective view takes into account the height of the driver - I am tall, and can see over anything in the bottom 6-8 inches of my screen - a shorter driver might not.
I found this out a few years back when my car was MOT'd, and I was told the Give Blood sticker was obstructing the screen, and would have to come out! It was along side the tax disc!

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Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

Unlike mobile phones, a sat nav unit does not require hands to be taken off the wheel. Once your route is set (with the car stationary!) they require no interaction until you reach your destination.

Most sat-nav units have a low-dazzle "night mode" and some switch to this mode automatically at the appropriate time of day. Backlight brightness can also be adjusted.

Even so, there is still some distraction value, but it's a trade-off. On balance, sat nav is safer than reading a paper map behind the wheel, taking directions off a passenger or relying on road signs when you're in an area you don't know.

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“For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.” - H. L. Mencken

It's an offence to have a 'TV screen or similar' within the field of view of the driver in a moving vehicle. This law has a specific exemption of navigation and instrumentation displays.

Seems fair enough to me. The simplified diagrams on sat nav displays should not be a distraction for experienced drivers, especially since when hazards require your attention there's no pressure or need to even glance at the thing.

I do have some concerns that inexperienced drivers might allow their attention to be drawn to the thing for too long, but then if it wasn't the sat nav it might be something else. The problem is with the control of attention rather than the devices themselves.

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

I actually find the Sat Nav less distracting than trying to read all those misleading road signs. You know the ones where you are following a particular road through a strange town and the signs suddenly stop indicating the road you want.

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Shooting is good for you and too good for some people.

Where I have my sat nav mounted does not obscure anything that I would not already have hit

I regularly drive to new places and I find it much less distracting than being lost and trying to read a map. On the way to work this morning I had a van driver head straight at me because he was looking at a map instead of the road. You might say that you should just stop and look at the map, but it is not always easy to find somewhere to stop safely and legally in busy traffic.

The sat nav also removes the problem you get when you carefully plan a route with a map only to find the road is closed and you get diverted. In a few seconds it will have plotted a new route.

At night it has a dark screen mode and I reduce the brightness of the display then I don't find it causes a problem.

My only complaint about sat nav is that the maps are not 100% accurate and very occasionally it will try to route you down a buses/taxis only road or a dirt track.

Have a look at this. Personally I don't use sat-nav because I don't like not knowing where I am. If I look at a map I always have a reasonable idea where I am and where I'm going. Blindly following those things could lead you anywhere (and maybe even in completely the wrong direction) and you wouldn't know any better.

I'll tell you what I do find extremely distracting though - LCDs mounted in the back of the headrests so the kids can watch DVDs. On a dark motorway at night, passing a car fitted with them, I find my attention automatically drawn to the movement and brightness... could do to be shielded some how so that you can only see them from the rear seats IMO.

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Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.

Hi Paul,

I agree with the sentiment but the reality as we know is that the huge majority of drivers are not experienced, or more accurately not aware of or sensitive to their surroundings. They don't view, they don't indicate, they barge into trafffic from the slip lanes, they hog lane 2 like they own it... Is yet another techno distraction really good for these people to have in their vehicles?
The responsible folks will no doubt use night mode etc. The daft ones will not.

I find it hard to believe that the supposed benefits of satnav displays could be considered to outweigh the potential safety disadvantages. If you need to read a map, you stop and read a map - to the poster who suggested that GPS was safer than reading a map while driving - I agree - but reading a map while driving is illegal! Two wrongs are still not a right!

The double standards on this one seem quite stunning - using a mobile phone while driving is considered tantamount to murder but staring at a computer screen stuck on one's windscreen is a benefit?

Te best way to navigate is to plan your trip then look out of the window.

I think you're basing your view on a biased sample. It's just that the poorer drivers are much more noticable than the ordinary ones. In fact if you see 5 out of 200 vehicles behaving badly, it's easy to remember the 5 and very difficult to remember the 195.

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

Hi Paul, on the bias issue, what percentage of drivers on the road would you consider to possess the skills necessary to handle an additional and permanent distraction?
To test the distraction idea, if you can bear it, go in to a pub that has a TV on and try not looking at the screen. Can't be done, no matter how good your intentions. The eye is naturally drawn to the movement, colour and light. With windscreen-mounted displays, add to that the factor of changing focus from <1m and back to infinity again. A speedometer and other analogue dials can be read using peripheral vision with no problem - why did digital dashes die such a rapid death? They cannot be read easily. Ditto GPS.

Have you actually used a sat nav? You are seriously overestimating the distracting effect.

It's all very well saying you should plan your trip, but if you do as many miles as I do you frequently find roads closed because of accidents, diversions where the signs stop after the first two junctions, and sometimes you just miss a turn because it was not signed in the way you expected (e.g. no road number, only a place name or vice versa). If any of these things happen with sat nav you just keep going and it will find a new route but with a map you will have to stop which is sometimes not possible (e.g. on a motorway or a busy city road).

I do journeys to places I have never been almost once a week and to places I rarely go several times a week. I'd hate to have to go back to maps.

Hi semitone,

I have used Satnav on many occasions, all of them the car manufacturer's original equipment. I fully appreciate the potential benefits but I don't believe I'm overestimating the distraction effect. As a comparision, it's OK to talk with your passengers but absolutely not OK to talk on a mobile phone. It's OK to look at a moving, colour GPS display but not at a TV. I don't see how these things are being differentiated other than by highly selective values- they are ALL avoidable distractions.

A driver on the motorway does not really need a computer display telling him to turn off in 45 miles. Outside of urban situations it's just an excuse to take out your brain and leave it at home.

You can't compare watching TV to quickly glancing at the display of a sat nav. That's ridiculous.

I think you and I will just have to agree to differ on this one

Some people are obviously more easily distracted than others. I certainly find TV very distracting but the Sat Nav not in the slightest. I find the voice instructions more than enough so the screen only gets a quick look for confirmation occasionally.

When I had an old classic car I spent a lot of time looking at the guages waiting for something to go wrong.

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Shooting is good for you and too good for some people.

Ha! Fair enough, that was a poor example on my part. Got carried away.

I do think that the time taken to move one's eyes to the display, refocus to it, assimilate the data properly, move view back to the road and refocus again can be a problem.

Being conservative, the time required at 70mph to go through the process of looking, actually understanding the data from the display then going back to viewing the road is around 2 seconds. In that time your car has travelled 62 metres or a little over 200 feet. Some potential there to mess up.

Plus, maybe more importantly, the tendency for some drivers to look at / program / mess about with / admire their new windscreen-mounted toy is an overlooked issue.

It takes 3 satellites minimum for GPS to work out where you are, so unless the 3 you are attached to have moved out of their orbit (which is most unlikely), then the info will always be correct.


Your "attraction" to an LCD screen is no different to any other distraction out there.
No offence here Sixy, but if you cannot override what your brain is telling you then maybe you shouldn't be driving at night.

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What makes you think I'm drunk officer, have I got a fat bird with me?

Curmudgeon wrote:

That seems a little unfair. If you are travelling at seventy you are unlikely to need to actually look at the Sat Nav because you aren't expecting to make any navigation changes.

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Shooting is good for you and too good for some people.