Satellite Navigation systems has become the best thing ever invented for most US divers as now they do not have spend much time wandering around roads. For example, can you remember your life before nav era?
Currently the level of their sales is constantly growing. This happens in part thanking to convenient and compact add-up systems. However according to researches, in-car navigation equipment used incorrectly can cause serious road accidents and stand motorists in bad stead. Unfortunately new technologies can sometimes be even more distracting than reading a map on the steering wheel.
Loss of Concentration
One of the surveys proved that satellite navs make 20 per cents of motorists lose concentration. At the same time, among those drivers who prefer reading maps spread over the steering wheel while the car moves, only 16 per cents lose their concentration.
Out of 10 motorists 1 admits that he or she uses controls of the satellite navigation system instead of programming the route before getting at wheel. While doing that they take their eyes off the road which can easily lead to an accident.
Most of motorists even don’t get familiarized with the unfamiliar route in advance. They consider this not necessary as their cars are equipped with modern navs.
Another fact is also worrying. Whatever drivers use to find their way either navs or paper maps they take their eyes off the road one time per an average 10 seconds diving at 60 mph speed.
Take Enough Time to Plan Your Route
Here is Managing Director of Privilege Insurance Ian Parker’s advice on how to be safe using navigation systems: “You should spend some time planning your future route on Internet route finder or on a paper map. This will allow you to concentrate on the road on motion. Being at wheel, take a break every two hours. Use this time to check the route and study carefully the next section of your journey. If you are going to follow the rou� which is absolutely unfamiliar for you, the safest thing would be to take a passenger and let him her navigate.”
Being Sent the Wrong Way
In quiet rural areas satellite navigation systems can cause another problem having sent drivers through them despite of heavy traffic which is too intensive for small roads. This problem can affect residents as well as drivers. Poor driver who was directed by the satellite navs to narrow one-way street, onto flooded or muddy track, into a lake or farmyard leaves the inhabitants of these regions furious.
In the UK the residents of one village demanded to remove their quiet and sleepy location from nav database after their district had been literary flooded with hapless sales reps misdirected there by their navs.
The root of this problem is in the fact that the navigation equipment usually chooses the shortest rout from point A to point B and often do not differentiate between unclassified and classified roads.
Sat nav system manufacturers admit that weekly they get hundreds complains from motorists who had been directed in the wrong way by the navigation systems. In their turn they do all their best to remove these drawbacks of navs but still you should be careful as navigation technologies are not as easy as they seem.