By Sonia Dasgupta
Lost. Great. The nearest sign of life was about 20 miles back. Even better.
In situations like this, Betty may become your best friend. She a character voice available through Tom Tom One’s automotive navigation system.
Navigation systems became a popular feature in vehicles in the last five years. Now they can be found in cell phones as well. Verizon, Sprint and Nextel have all released phones with navigation capability. Most navigation systems like Tom Tom are costly, ranging anywhere from $250 to more than $1,000, depending on the performance and features available. So is it more valuable to get the navigation feature put on your cell phone for about $2.99 per month?
The new LG Chocolate phone released by Verizon not only is VZ Navigator capable, but can play music, take pictures and be used to communicate with or without Blue Tooth Wireless. It’s like four gadgets in one. For about $400 or $180 and a two-year contract, people can pay to carry less.
Chris, a salesperson at the local Verizon store, says that the LG Chocolate is a good phone for music.
“It’s great for tunes, but if you want text messaging, the keypad is small, “ says Chris. “I would go for the V phone if you text message a lot.”
The V phone is like the Sidekick. When asked about the navigation system, he claims it’s good.
“It works well,” says Chris, “gets you where you need to go.”
Navigation systems work in cell phones, but some people want them installed in their cars.
Senior Katie Rhoads has a Tom Tom One in her Jeep. She says she uses it often, even if she wants to go somewhere close by.
“I’ve been waiting two years for this thing,” she says as she plays with the screen. “I’m gonna use it.”
Katie says she wanted the navigation system to help her travel between states and around unfamiliar areas.
“My dad lives in Connecticut and I don’t really know the roads,” she says. “It’s nice to have something that helps you when you’re lost or prevents you from getting into that situation.”
She says her favorite feature is that you can look through a list of local restaurants and stores and know where they are located.
“I also like that it tells you how long it will take to get to the destination and it recalculates it constantly depending on your speed,” Katie says.
She says that although the navigation systems in the cell phones may seem innovative, the screen is small and the search options are hard to use.
“It’s not distracting,” Katie says of her Tom Tom. “There’s a special light at night.”
Although it can help immensely when travelling through unknown territory, automotive navigation systems may be another safety issue on the road. Whether the driver is paying attention to the road or to the screen is a question many automotive researchers have wondered.
Research on the safety of navigation systems in vehicles is basically non-existent. Most research deals with aviation and other forms of navigation. However, in 1997, Paul Green of the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute proposed methods to test automotive navigation safety and what possible situations could occur with navigation systems as a cause of an accident. He sets up scenarios where drivers are looking at their navigation screen and not at the road or when the instructions of the system fail causing drivers to make rash decisions. His research could be a basis to a technological mean to test navigation safety, but for now there is no mean to test navigation systems.
