Looking through the news, it’s not hard to find a story about someone driving into a river or onto railroad on the advice of an in-car navigation system. Last year, a Seattle bus driver blamed his GPS unit after he collided with a bridge embankment, injuring several of his passengers, according to the Seattle Times. The Mirror newspaper in Great Britain reported on a survey it had conducted estimating that navigation systems were behind some 300,000 accidents or near accidents in the UK.
Its a shame no-one wants to take responsibility anymore. Too many Pass-The-Buck on to something else for their contribution to a failure. Everyone drives like they put on a pair of shoes for walking instead of thinking like an aircraft pilot. I rarely, rarely see anyone checking their vehicles prior to driving or checking their routes before actually driving them.
Knowing whats ahead is all part of the plan. Use devices to help aid you, but use common sense to survive the drive. I personally still treat everyone on the road like a potential idiot out to get me. One idiot got me once, lesson learned.
Excellent post on the terrible tremd of driver distraction with GPS systems. What's great about the current on dash and in dash gps units are the bluetooth and text to speech capabilities which eliminate the need to even look at the device while driving or entering directions. What's distrubing is the trend that GPS will someday be mostly on cellphones and PDAs, which brings the problem full circle back. Let's hope that the current GPS product lines capture the advantage of less or no driver distraction as new state laws are passed to reduce texting or other types of activities that lead to so many accidents and suffering.
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GPS Safety, Part 1: Texting, Part 2?
Posted by: Mike Pearson September 29, 2009 04:00 AMLooking through the news, it’s not hard to find a story about someone driving into a river or onto railroad on the advice of an in-car navigation system. Last year, a Seattle bus driver blamed his GPS unit after he collided with a bridge embankment, injuring several of his passengers, according to the Seattle Times. The Mirror newspaper in Great Britain reported on a survey it had conducted estimating that navigation systems were behind some 300,000 accidents or near accidents in the UK.
Knowing whats ahead is all part of the plan. Use devices to help aid you, but use common sense to survive the drive. I personally still treat everyone on the road like a potential idiot out to get me. One idiot got me once, lesson learned.