Navigation Systems
I rode in a car with a fancy navigation system. I watched fascinated as the display showed our position on a map. One of the things I really liked about it is how it shows one way streets and street names. In areas with lots of one way streets and most streets don’t have signs, it’s incredibly useful.
An icon on the map indicates the car’s position and which way it faces. One puzzling thing is how twice when we were starting out, it drew the line in the direction away from what we were facing. In each situation, it could have had us turn down another street to join the route it was mapping for us without having us turn around in the middle of the street. Of course, as we set out, it quickly redrew the route when we didn’t turn around.
I think having such a system would be dangerous for me, at least for the first few months. All I could do in the car is watch the screen, analyzing how and how well it works.
The position of the display in the car could be a bit friendlier for the driver, too. I found glancing from it to the road while in the passenger’s seat problematic. I wonder if there’s a better way to mount it higher without blocking much of the view from the front window or requiring the driver to look down. I don’t think I would feel safe driving with it on for a while. It’s a good thing there are also audio cues.
I have lots of questions, of course. Upon asking, I learned the car’s system isn’t comprehensive. The owners must purchase the disks for various regions of the country. This could be problematic for a road trip across the country. What ever happened to good old fashioned maps? I’ve become so accustomed to getting directions through online mapping services, that many times when I’m driving around lost, I find myself yearning for an Internet connection so I can figure out how to get to where I need to be.
I also learned the importance of the thermometers measuring the oustide temperature recently. I just thought of them as being rather novel without much real purpose, but this winter, several times while I was driving around, it would have been nice to know the outside temperature so I would know whether ice on the roads would be a real hazard.
Addendum: Welcome, visitors from Scripting News!
I was wondering where all of the comments were coming from. My readers have been strangely quiet lately.
February 23rd, 2005 at 9:55 am
Nice to read somewhere atleast the talkabout on the car-nav-systems! I totally agree with you. The position of the Screen is important, and so is the ability to learn to map it up while you are trying to concentrate on driving. Its a bit risky, though. Hopefully, the car manufacturers and the designers alike would come up with something more car-navigation-friendly. But I still love my mapquest maps and can’t drive without it!
February 23rd, 2005 at 1:06 pm
The reason that GPS can’t show you which way you’re facing at first is that it only knows position, not direction. It has to wait for you to move so it can figure out your direction from the difference in two location readings. Some GPS units have a compass built in to solve this problem.
February 23rd, 2005 at 2:40 pm
Maybe I could have expained this better in the text above. The icon on the map is similar to an arrow. The point of the arrow seems to relate to the front of the car. Based on the position of the point of the arrow and what the system was showing us on the map, I thought the system knew which way we were facing. Otherwise, the map would have been oriented differently and/or the point would have been in the opposite direction. (Now I can’t remember if the point actually moved.) When we did turn around, the map would change to reflect the direction we were moving.
If I remember correctly, the screen always scrolled from the top to the bottom, no matter what direction we were headed. The system would have to know which way we were facing and how we were headed in order to scroll the map properly.
I don’t understand how it would have “forgotten” the direction of the car unless the driver somehow shut down the system. In one case, the driver pulled over to the side of the road to get driving directions from the system. During this time, the system was fully operational. Since we had just pulled over, it knew what direction we had been heading and it seems like it should have “remembered” that information. It drew the line behind us instead of advising us to turn onto a side street to join the route a block to the north.
In the other case, the car and perhaps the system had been shut off for a few hours. When we got in again, the map and icon matched what we were presently facing. Since the map and arrow were oriented properly, I thought it knew which way we were facing. It could have just been operating from what the screen had last shown, perhaps.
The system might also be programmed to assume at certain points that cars are in a driveway and can easily change direction. I don’t remember whether the map showed driveways. We were not in any driveways at either of those points. It could also operate under the assumption that drivers will turn around rather than turning on a side street.
Now that I’m thinking about this in more detail again and pondering what Dan wrote, I think I need to ride in the car again to see how the navigation system works. ha ha ha "Hey, can I ride in your car again?"
At least it’s not the kind of system that constantly tells us we’re lost …
February 23rd, 2005 at 4:35 pm
A couple of things 1) isn’t it a new BMW that is totally voice activated — isn’t it supposed to be pretty hilarious — that would keep your eyes on the road… only you sometimes just need to SEE the map 2) there’s been tons of research on this for fighter and helo pilots. Questions of the human engineering of HUDs — either way it diverts driver attention away from the road and should not be used while moving. I think some DC cops even had accidents while using their computers while driving, but I could be remembering wrong.
February 23rd, 2005 at 11:12 pm
“All of the comments”? Four comments is “all”? And one of them is an auto-comment? And then you start ragging on your regular readers! <nudge, nudge>, while you are cruising around town in a tricked-out ride…..I fear our gal j has gone Hollywood!
February 24th, 2005 at 3:51 pm
I’ve had my first car nav experience in December and had very similiar reactions. I am totally convinced that they are going to cause more accidents in the short term as people get them but aren’t used to having this new distraction in the vehicle.