Technology driving motorists to distraction

Bryn Nelson Columnist

Sometime in the near future, a driver may be navigating a city street with a three-dimensional GPS interface and breezing through a self-organizing traffic light when her bumper-mounted radar sensor slows her car to avoid a close encounter with another sedan. Whew! Now if only that tune emanating from the asphalt was a bit more melodic.

Car gadgets are nothing new, but a growing crop of high-tech systems designed for both vehicles and roadways may dramatically transform how drivers commute in the 21st century. Some, like increasingly sophisticated GPS systems, offer dashboard-mounted virtual worlds complete with realistic city landmarks. Others, such as “Melody Roads,” reward drivers moving at set speeds with songs played every time their tires move over precisely cut grooves or raised patterns along a road.

But where automotive technology is concerned, can there ever be too much of a good thing?

Helpful or harmful?
With so many recent arrivals popping up around the world, “I’m confident in saying we don’t know very much,” said Rob Foss, a senior research scientist at the University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center in Chapel Hill. “Some of this stuff is going to be terribly dangerous and some of it is going to be tremendously helpful, and probably everything in between. We have no idea, but we’re really worried.”

The potential for driving while distracted, a danger already well-documented among cell phone users, is one major concern. So is the difficulty in predicting whether drivers will be able to understand often complex navigation and safety systems, and how they’ll change their behavior as a result.

Unlike the drug approval process governed by the Food and Drug Administration, many car systems are sold independently of the vehicles, complicating the ability of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to monitor their safety.

“So from a regulatory side, there’s some gaps in terms of who’s responsible,” said John Lee, Director of Human Factors Research at the National Advanced Driving Simulator at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. “Also, there hasn’t been a really well-stated or well-defined arrangement for assessing how new technology is changing driving for the better or the worse.”

One product set to hit U.S. markets this year is a software package that allows GPS devices to display three-dimensional maps of road elevation, surrounding terrain, nearby buildings and other landmarks. Budapest, Hungary-based Nav N Go, which introduced its iGO 8 system to North American drivers in January at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, is calculating that photorealism will dominate the navigation market within the next five years.

From a purely navigational standpoint, CEO Leon van de Pas said his company’s 3-D interface isn’t inherently better than existing software. What sets it apart is its use of landmarks to provide visual cues for drivers as they near their final destinations. “People like to have it as realistic as possible,” he said. “That’s why Google Earth is so popular.”

Safety concerns
Some of iGO 8’s landmarks are uncanny in their likenesses, like the Old Chicago Water Tower and London’s Big Ben. But realism isn’t necessarily an advantage if a virtual London or Chicago prevents drivers from paying attention to the real thing.

“In principal, it’s like one of these Second Life [virtual worlds]. You’re going into a second world, when you need to be devoting every second to your real world and driving,” Foss said. “It doesn’t strike me as a good idea in terms of safety.”

Nav N Go’s van de Pas said the virtual buildings become transparent as drivers approach them to cut down on distractions. But with sound controls, a simulated dashboard of speed and time information, and a zoom in and out function that can display a city block or an entire continent, there’s no shortage of things to look at.

“Anything that takes the driver’s attention away from what he or she needs to be doing, which is paying attention to the road at all times, probably is not going to be helpful,” Foss said, stressing that inattention for more than two seconds can be particularly dangerous. The risk is especially high for younger, inexperienced drivers who are still learning to keep their eyes on the road.

A further obstacle is whether a new technology’s users will understand what to do in response to a beeping sound or a flashing light. To bridge the knowledge gap, automakers have tinkered with more automated systems even as they try to improve how drivers perceive their surroundings. One relatively new feature, known as intelligent speed adaptation, can warn a speeding driver to slow down, make stepping on the gas more difficult and automatically slow the car.

A separate innovation, Nissan’s radar-based Distance Control Assist, uses bumper-mounted radar sensors, a buzzer and semi-automatic brake and gas pedal controls to keep drivers from tailgating. “If you’re close, the accelerator pushes back quite a bit,” said the University of Iowa’s Lee, who helped develop the technology. “In addition to seeing the car ahead, you’re essentially feeling the car ahead.”

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