Agency Aims to Regulate Map Aids in Vehicles

[flowers]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/16/business/agency-aims-to-regulate-map-aids-in-vehicles.html

Getting directions on the road from Google Maps and other smartphone apps is a popular alternative to the expensive navigation aids included in some cars. The apps are also a gray area when it comes to laws banning the use of cellphones or texting while driving.

The Transportation Department wants to enter the argument.

The department is intensifying its battle against distracted driving by seeking explicit authority from Congress to regulate navigation aids of all types, including apps on smartphones.

The measure, included in the Obama administration’s proposed transportation bill, would specify that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has the authority to set restrictions on the apps and later order changes if they are deemed dangerous, much the way it currently regulates mechanical features of cars.

The measure has the support of automakers, which already mostly comply with voluntary guidelines for built-in navigation systems, but it has run into stiff opposition from technology companies, which say that any such law would be impractical and impossible to enforce. It’s another example, they say, of federal regulators trying vainly to keep up with a rapidly changing industry.
Photo
Systems built into car dashboards would be among the aids included under a measure in a proposed transportation bill. Credit Nick King for The New York Times

“They don’t have enough software engineers,” said Catherine McCullough, executive director of the Intelligent Car Coalition, an industry group. “They don’t have the budget or the structure to oversee both Silicon Valley and the auto industry.”

The underlying issue has already worked its way into the courts. In California, Steven R. Spriggs received a $165 ticket two years ago for using his iPhone while driving in stop-and-go traffic near Fresno. A highway patrol motorcycle officer rolled up alongside his car after seeing the glow from the screen on Mr. Spriggs’s face.

“I held it up and said, ‘It’s a map,’ ” Mr. Spriggs said. He was not talking on the phone, which is prohibited by California law.

But the police officer would not budge. “He said, ‘Pull over, it doesn’t matter,’ ” said Mr. Spriggs, the director of planned giving at California State University, Fresno.

An appeals court ruled this year that it did matter, and Mr. Spriggs’s conviction was reversed.

Regulators maintain that they already have the authority over navigation aids and merely want it clearly written into law.

Twice last year, David L. Strickland, when he was administrator of N.H.T.S.A., told Congress that navigation systems could be “classified as motor vehicle equipment.” The electronics industry, in response, argues that “motor vehicle equipment” includes objects like key-chain fobs that can unlock a car by remote control, not apps on a smartphone.

Last year, after negotiations with the industry, the Transportation Department released voluntary guidelines for automakers stipulating that any navigation system should not take more than two seconds for a single interaction, and 12 seconds total. At 60 miles an hour, two seconds is 176 feet.

[Charlespg]

      Twice last year, David L. Strickland, when he was administrator of N.H.T.S.A., told Congress that navigation systems could be “classified as motor vehicle equipment.”         

smuck off nanny state  Nazi 

[mountaineer]

Leave it to the feds to come up with one thing they don't believe they've sufficiently regulated yet.

[rangerrebew]

Now Obama Wants To Ban Navigation Apps

by Whoopie • 16 June, 2014 • Crime, Politics, Tech • 0 Comments




Getting directions on the road from Google Maps and other smartphone apps is a popular alternative to the expensive navigation aids included in some cars. The apps are also a gray area when it comes to laws banning the use of cellphones or texting while driving.

The Transportation Department wants to enter the argument.

The department is intensifying its battle against distracted driving by seeking explicit authority from Congress to regulate navigation aids of all types, including apps on smartphones.

The measure, included in the Obama administration’s proposed transportation bill, would specify that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has the authority to set restrictions on the apps and later order changes if they are deemed dangerous, much the way it currently regulates mechanical features of cars.

Learn more:

Great, if they have their way being caught with a ‘nav app’ on your phone while driving will be tantamount to kiddie porn. Even if you aren’t using it, some zealous cop or prosecutor will claim it shows ‘intent’ to violate the law.

The government keeps slapping us back and forth like a ping-pong ball. On one hand they want everyone to carry a GPS equipped smart phone “in case of emergency” so first responders can locate you quickly.

Actually what they want is the ability to snoop on your every movement. Increasingly the police are equipped with gizmos that download your contacts, pics, text messages, phone call and location history. And the courts have ruled that the police don’t even need probable cause or a warrant to seize that info.

But then, if you happen to have the phone with you and switched on while driving, that’s a crime too.

Of course automobile manufacturers support the restrictions. They want a monopoly on dashboard mounted navigation systems. They can jack up the cost of the car by several hundred dollars and force you to subscribe to some service that pays a kickback to the car company.

dash board map

Like that silly ‘On Star’ button. A $200 built in cellphone that only dialed one number and couldn’t be put in your pocket.

Somehow, using that stuff isn’t ‘distracted driving’. Why, because the screen is bigger and it’s mounted permanently on the dashboard right under your nose?

Whether it’s a tablet or cellphone, you don’t even need to look at the screen because every device offers verbal turn by turn directions, no different than if a human passenger was reading you directions out loud.

What gets me, if having a cellphone in your car is so damn distracting, how do cops manage to drive and use all the electronic crap like laptops, radios, radar, Lo-Jack detector and god only knows what other technology that they don’t want us serfs to know about.

Read more at http://blurbrain.com/now-obama-wants-ban-navigation-apps/#JilHTL1SeZsjZU97.99
Read more at http://blurbrain.com/now-obama-wants-ban-navigation-apps/#JilHTL1SeZsjZU97.99

[EC]

What gets me, if having a cellphone in your car is so damn distracting, how do cops manage to drive and use all the electronic crap like laptops, radios, radar, Lo-Jack detector and god only knows what other technology that they don’t want us serfs to know about.

The driver drives. Shotgun runs tactical. Does this author know nothing at all?