Advanced Driving Hub

waremark wrote:

Another Bill wrote:after a short while, I found that I no longer missed the visual display at all.

I can manage without the voice but not without the visuals.

waremark wrote:

Another Bill wrote:These days I use a phone and Google for directions. Mine’s able to connect to the car audio via bluetooth so spoken directions are loud and clear. The actual phone however is tucked away out of sight, such as in a side pocket of my jacket. Being invisible the temptation to look at it is removed and, after a short while, I found that I no longer missed the visual display at all.

I find the opposite - I can manage without the voice but not without the visuals. How do you manage to understand complex junctions?

Strangely Brown wrote:

waremark wrote:

Another Bill wrote:These days I use a phone and Google for directions. Mine’s able to connect to the car audio via bluetooth so spoken directions are loud and clear. The actual phone however is tucked away out of sight, such as in a side pocket of my jacket. Being invisible the temptation to look at it is removed and, after a short while, I found that I no longer missed the visual display at all.

I find the opposite - I can manage without the voice but not without the visuals. How do you manage to understand complex junctions?

This. I would rather have a view of the junction than a description from which I have to form a picture in my head. Apart from that I find that very often the Nav is too laggy and I am already leaving a complex roundabout just as it get round to telling me that I need to leave.

Gareth wrote:

waremark wrote:

Another Bill wrote:after a short while, I found that I no longer missed the visual display at all.

I can manage without the voice but not without the visuals.

Likewise. A boing is helpful for alerting.

In my experience the voice is often misleading; turnings are called out that aren't, and others that are, aren't. Must be the mapping data doesn't always identify the main road at a junction, so the algorithm can easily get it wrong.

Maybe Bill doesn't worry about precisely following the satnav route since it'll fix it up anyway. While I know that, I find it annoying to take the wrong turning.

Gareth wrote:Maybe Bill doesn't worry about precisely following the satnav route since it'll fix it up anyway. While I know that, I find it annoying to take the wrong turning.

Another Bill wrote:Well it sounds like I’m outnumbered (again).

Gareth wrote:Maybe Bill doesn't worry about precisely following the satnav route since it'll fix it up anyway. While I know that, I find it annoying to take the wrong turning.

There’s truth in that, in as much as I tend to take the Satnav route with a pinch of salt. I generally have a rough idea of what kind of road I’m expecting at any point in a journey. If I’m expecting good A roads and the Satnav tells me to turn onto a single track road, or into a housing estate, it’s probably just trying to cut a corner and I’ll nearly always ignore it.

I do find Google’s live traffic maps extremely useful when crawling in a traffic jam and I want to know how long it stretches ahead, and whether there might be any interesting detour. But that usually involves a bit of pinching, scrolling and zooming, in which case it’s only feasible with a willing assistant in the passenger seat to act as human Satnav.

jcochrane wrote:TomTom on the iPhone projected onto the car's info system works well for me and deals with some of the points you raise.

Research suggests that spoken navigation instructions have been shown to be easier to process and respond to than visual instructions or a combination of spoken and visual instructions. One study suggested that spoken navigation instructions have also been shown in real driving conditions to produce better driving performance than visual instructions or a combination of visual and spoken instructions3. Although this study did indicate that interpreting complex instructions did place cognitive demand on drivers leading to poorer driving performance, a study by Virginia Tech Transportation Institute found that voice-based navigation systems are safer than those that rely on visual aids, as the driver can navigate without having to read a map or rely on visual navigation instructions4.

Another Bill wrote:In meandering around the web trying to find support for my own take, I found this buried deep in a RoSPA page.

https://www.rospa.com/rospaweb/docs/adv ... satnav.pdf

Research suggests that spoken navigation instructions have been shown to be easier to process and respond to than visual instructions or a combination of spoken and visual instructions. One study suggested that spoken navigation instructions have also been shown in real driving conditions to produce better driving performance than visual instructions or a combination of visual and spoken instructions3. Although this study did indicate that interpreting complex instructions did place cognitive demand on drivers leading to poorer driving performance, a study by Virginia Tech Transportation Institute found that voice-based navigation systems are safer than those that rely on visual aids, as the driver can navigate without having to read a map or rely on visual navigation instructions4.

Of course, you can prove anything using Google, so I’m not claiming to be right or trying to change anybody’s minds. But at least I feel I’m not entirely alone on this one.

It’s a pity there’s no links to referenced studies, they might’ve been interesting too. Technology may have since evolved, rendering them less relevant.