GPS Safety, Part 1: Texting, Part 2?

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.

However, the reputation of the GPS navigation unit is nowhere near as bad as that of the humble cellphone's texting application, which recently made the news after Virginia Tech researchers revealed in July that texting while driving is some 23 times as dangerous as undistracted driving. Some states have begun taking measures to specifically ban texting while driving, and the danger was brought into stark relief last month in a graphic PSA commercial created in the UK.

Should GPS units share the same reputation for distraction as texting?

While any in-car device can potentially steal a driver's attention away from the road if the driver allows it to, there's little reason to worry about the hazards of navigation devices in particular, so long as they're properly manufactured and installed and drivers take some common-sense precautions to avoid danger.

"There is some risk associated with them, particularly if people gaze for long periods of time at maps," John Ulczycki, vice president of research, communications and advocacy for the National Safety Council, told TechNewsWorld. "However, we are aware of no evidence that is happening to any significant degree."

Distracted Driving Concerns Grow

Distracted driving has become an increasingly important issue in recent years alongside the rapid rise in the number of cellphones, portable video devices and other sophisticated and alluring electronic devices owned by consumers worldwide.

In July, the issue received a spark after the Virgina Tech Transportation Institute reported that its latest research concluded that texting while driving raised the risk of an accident to 23 times that of undistracted driving.

That research followed on several other studies that found the risk accidents created by talking on a cellphone is four times that of undistracted driving.

GPS-Specific Research

While the effects of cellphones and texting on drivers has received much well-publicized research, significantly less research has been done about the effects of GPS units.

A 2000 study by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration concluded that navigation systems did pose some risk of driver distraction, especially when trying to enter addresses manually while driving.

In 2006, Great Britain's Privilege Insurance surveyed motorists in that country about their experiences with GPS units. They found that 19 percent of drivers reported losing concentration on the road while fiddling with their devices, compared to 17 percent of paper map users.

A survey released in March by Australian insurer AAMI found 14 percent of drivers using GPS units reported losing their focus on the road.

However, that survey also found that 42 percent said technologies such as changing a CD or tuning to a new radio station caused their eyes to dangerously wander from the road.

The AA A Foundation for Traffic Safety said as much in a 2003 study in which the organization noted that the vast majority of distractions behind the wheel aren't technological, but rather old-fashioned menaces such as shaving, eating, paying attention to a fussy child or straining to see the gory details of a roadside accident.

Looking for Trouble

The danger from all of these tasks, researchers say, is that they take a driver's eyes away from the road ahead. Taking your eyes off that road for two seconds in any six-second window of time doubles your risk of crashing, Charlie Klauer, a senior research associate at Virginia Tech, told TechNewsWorld.

That's why texting or Internet use is so dangerous -- it requires sustained visual attention, she said.

While much less research has been done to evaluate the risk of crashing while using a GPS unit, Paul Green, a professor at the University of Michigan who studies auto safety, said that's because there's not much need.

"The conclusions pretty much are that there's really not any issue with the navigation systems, except in a few instances," he told TechNewsWorld.

When GPS units first began to spread, engineers did studies with drivers to determine the risk factors. Best practices put in place after those studies resulted in changes to the devices that made it easier for users to input addresses and get information about where they are and where they must go next, he said.

Many new GPS units feature voice commands, voiced directional prompts and larger screens that make getting updates faster and less distracting. Many built-in units automatically lock out drivers from performing the most dangerous of tasks, like manually keying in a destination, while driving.

Growing Use of Cellphone GPS Could Be a Problem

Those safety standards generally apply to built-in units and some portable devices. They tend to apply to a far lesser degree to cellphones, which increasingly have built-in GPS capabilities.

Those capabilities are becoming more popular. In April, industry research firm RNCOS predicted that sales of dedicated car-based navigation systems could suffer significantly at the hands of GPS-enabled smart phones in coming years.

By 2013, the company predicted, smartphones will hold 70 percent of the GPS market share.

In general GPS-enabled smartphones have smaller screens than their dedicated device counterparts. They often have quieter speakers and few of the automated features built-in and portable standalone devices currently feature. That raises the risk that drivers who increasingly rely on smartphones as their all-in-one mobility solutions could pose heightened risks by expecting the phones to guide them to unfamiliar destinations, Green said.

Safety Tips

A few simple tips make GPS units significantly safer. First, don't try to input addresses while moving -- even if your navigation unit will allow you to. Have a passenger do it or pull over. Second, mount portable units on the dash or window close to the driver's seat so that you don't have to look far to see the display.

"If you bring those things into the car and place them on the floor or the seat next to you, that's the worst thing you can do," Klauer said.

Don't rely on the devices entirely. Arm yourself with a paper map for backup and some common sense to keep yourself out of troubling territory.

Benefits Outweigh Dangers?

All that being said, the likely benefits of GPS units shouldn't be overlooked, said James Jenness, a researcher with Westat, a research firm that has examined GPS safety for the NHTSA.

Among them: not getting lost, avoiding traffic congestion, even helping the environment. Some units, he said, can calculate fuel-friendly routes, and many are equipped with sensors to receive traffic data and can automatically reroute drivers around congestion.

"What I don't think people have done is look at the holistic impact of these devices," he told TechNewsWorld. "It could be that there are some negative aspects of this due to distraction, but there are some positive effects, too."

GPS Safety, Part 2: Which Products Get It Right?