At this point in time, it’s commonly understood that speaking on a cellphone (interestingly, in many states, only if you’re holding that phone in your hand) or using one to issue/receive text messages while operating a motor vehicle dramatically increases your chances of a collision (according to cbsnews.com, 1 in 20 crashes are linked to cell phones). I don’t argue this.
What I’m curious about are statistics around collisions resulting from being distracted by other in-cabin modern day distractions, particularly GPS devices. Not people endangered by poor directions, mind you; I’m interested in accidents resulting from drivers focused on where they’re going more than where they are.
No stats, but an anecdote: I was riding my wife’s sister using her new Garmin GPS; although I was operating the unit while she drove, she wasn’t accustomed to driving while listening to voice GPS. At one point after several turns in close succession, the unit said “turn left in .1 mile” and she immediately merged over into the left lane – without looking. The guy passing us was quite put out! She jerked the wheel and came back into our lane. No contact, but scared everyone concerned.
I hope this was a result of being unfamiliar with reacting to voice instructions, but she seemed psychologically overloaded at the time.
Pilots are taught: “Aviate, Navigate, Communicate” Meaning that actually op[erating the aircraft is the first priority, Not getting lost the next, and talking to ATC or the tower comes after the other two are covered.
To the extent that GPS makes navigation require less attention that traditional means (looking at paper maps, locating street names, reading written directions) it may actually improve safety.
GPS would certainly have prevented the two automobile accidents I have caused. In both cases I was trying to determine the name of a poorly marked street. In one case a car in front of me suddenly stopped, and I didn’t react in time to completely stop before hitting them. In the other case, I didn’t notice the stop sign.
I have also noticed that erratic drivers often have out-of-state plates, or are rental cars (before the Florida murders caused rental companies to stop marking the cars) . I presume that knowing exactly how to get where they are going would make for better driving.
It should also be noted that the task of navigation is closely related to operating the car. Discussing wedding plans with the maid of honor on a cell phone…not so much. Which is to say that navigation doesn’t tend to mentally remove the driver nearly as much as conducting a conversation.
the worst near miss I have ever had with a student driving was some moron on a freeway on ramp doing 35 and SLOWING DOWN, after we manage to lane change to go around he cuts directly in front of us requiring hard braking down to 20. after all the cars pass us at 60 we get a brake and go around…he was programing his gps.
there are some statistics out there, I know they made changes because the early ones would allow you do do this kind of dumb shit.
I think that’s a key point. Someone doesn’t (or at least I don’t) tend to use a GPS when he/she already knows where he/she is going, so we need to compare the driving ability of someone using a GPS against the driving ability of someone attempting to navigate by some other means. In my case the comparison would be made to driving while attempting to read my printouts of Google or Mapquest driving directions.
I haven’t yet had an accident or come close to one while using a GPS, but my last navigation-related one involved my driving down an unfamiliar highway in San Antonio while trying to read my Mapquest directions to determine where my next turn was - and then looking up to notice that the line of cars that had been in front of me going 65MPH was now a line of stopped cars.