htc***
04-27-2010, 09:50 PM
More risk involve to drive a car these days.
Driven to distraction
Posted on April 22nd 2010 by Michael La Fave / Categories:
I was rolling down the highway the other day listening to music on my vehicle's built-in hard drive, taking directions from the navigation system and talking on the phone via Bluetooth. Not all at the same time, mind you, as my Audi Q5's systems automatically lower the volume of the music to hear navigation instructions or take a phone call. I'm not quite sure what happens if you're on the phone and the navigation wants to spit out a direction in its somewhat pompous ,yet undeniably sultry female robot voice… I guess she waits.
I must admit I was rather impressed with how easily and seamlessly these complex systems were functioning. Of course part of the thanks has to go to the Audi salesman that paired my phone to the system. It wasn't really very hard, but if you can have someone else do it, then why not?
What prompted this post was a request by Sympatico's editor to write about how the various multimedia systems that are now available on cars may pose a safety risk due to the many distractions you might imagine them to provide. If you study your fellow motorists you'll notice that, by-and-large, they are more than happy to be distracted from the task of actually driving their cars. People eat, read, do their make-up, shave, talk on the phone and will soon be able to surf the web over wi-fi.
Believe it or not, Ford is a leader in in-car multimedia entertainment systems. Its Sync system is easily one of the best on the market, marred only by the use of an annoying touchscreen interface on car's equipped with navigation. It should be noted that the system also sports steering-wheel buttons and voice command capability as well.
Henry must be glowing in his grave, because Ford will also be one of the first manufacturers to finally offer properly integrated streaming internet radio and other features leveraging your smartphone's various apps. This can't be good news for the satellite radio guys.
Until now you've had to control these types of functions via your phone connected by an auxiliary output to the car. Not any more. Now the whole thing works seamlessly via dashboard buttons, screen buttons (if applicable) and even by speech. In fact, in the case of the Sync system, you're locked out from using the phone's interface to prevent you from fiddling with it's tiny controls instead of the easy-to-use Ford interfaces. Not to mention, your phone can stay in your pocket the whole time and stream content and/or functionality over Bluetooth. That said, I can't find any indication that you can actually stream internet radio with any measure of success via one of Canada's cellular providers. If you're aware of a Canadian alternative to Pandora let us know, but at least the Sync system's AppLink will allow it to control an unlimited number of smartphone apps as along as they are, in turn, designed to work with Sync.
I don't' have any numbers to back it up, but based on my own experience, having both hands on the wheels and my eyes on the road is critical to staying alert, even if I'm listening to music, talking on the phone via Bluetooth and taking nav. directions more or less at the same time. In an emergency, driver training takes over and if your hands and eyes are doing the right thing, the rest is easily ignored.
Executed in this fashion, I don't see how these systems are a distraction at all, except of course for the distraction of diverting enough brainpower to say "volume up" or "read Tweet timeline" but if that's taxing your I.Q. bandwidth, then you probably shouldn't be driving anyway.
http://autos.sympatico.ca/waste-gate/3860/driven-to-distraction
Driven to distraction
Posted on April 22nd 2010 by Michael La Fave / Categories:
I was rolling down the highway the other day listening to music on my vehicle's built-in hard drive, taking directions from the navigation system and talking on the phone via Bluetooth. Not all at the same time, mind you, as my Audi Q5's systems automatically lower the volume of the music to hear navigation instructions or take a phone call. I'm not quite sure what happens if you're on the phone and the navigation wants to spit out a direction in its somewhat pompous ,yet undeniably sultry female robot voice… I guess she waits.
I must admit I was rather impressed with how easily and seamlessly these complex systems were functioning. Of course part of the thanks has to go to the Audi salesman that paired my phone to the system. It wasn't really very hard, but if you can have someone else do it, then why not?
What prompted this post was a request by Sympatico's editor to write about how the various multimedia systems that are now available on cars may pose a safety risk due to the many distractions you might imagine them to provide. If you study your fellow motorists you'll notice that, by-and-large, they are more than happy to be distracted from the task of actually driving their cars. People eat, read, do their make-up, shave, talk on the phone and will soon be able to surf the web over wi-fi.
Believe it or not, Ford is a leader in in-car multimedia entertainment systems. Its Sync system is easily one of the best on the market, marred only by the use of an annoying touchscreen interface on car's equipped with navigation. It should be noted that the system also sports steering-wheel buttons and voice command capability as well.
Henry must be glowing in his grave, because Ford will also be one of the first manufacturers to finally offer properly integrated streaming internet radio and other features leveraging your smartphone's various apps. This can't be good news for the satellite radio guys.
Until now you've had to control these types of functions via your phone connected by an auxiliary output to the car. Not any more. Now the whole thing works seamlessly via dashboard buttons, screen buttons (if applicable) and even by speech. In fact, in the case of the Sync system, you're locked out from using the phone's interface to prevent you from fiddling with it's tiny controls instead of the easy-to-use Ford interfaces. Not to mention, your phone can stay in your pocket the whole time and stream content and/or functionality over Bluetooth. That said, I can't find any indication that you can actually stream internet radio with any measure of success via one of Canada's cellular providers. If you're aware of a Canadian alternative to Pandora let us know, but at least the Sync system's AppLink will allow it to control an unlimited number of smartphone apps as along as they are, in turn, designed to work with Sync.
I don't' have any numbers to back it up, but based on my own experience, having both hands on the wheels and my eyes on the road is critical to staying alert, even if I'm listening to music, talking on the phone via Bluetooth and taking nav. directions more or less at the same time. In an emergency, driver training takes over and if your hands and eyes are doing the right thing, the rest is easily ignored.
Executed in this fashion, I don't see how these systems are a distraction at all, except of course for the distraction of diverting enough brainpower to say "volume up" or "read Tweet timeline" but if that's taxing your I.Q. bandwidth, then you probably shouldn't be driving anyway.
http://autos.sympatico.ca/waste-gate/3860/driven-to-distraction