Driving with satnav can cause blindness to other hazards

[Darren]

Driving with a satnav guiding you can be dangerous according to a study by the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience..

In tests it was demonstrated that the act of trying to retain a visual memory of an image from the satnav screen can lead to you missing events happening in front of your eyes.

This "inattentional blindness" has been demonstrated in other studies including the 'invisible gorrlla' where people shown a video of a basket ball game fail to notice the man dressed in a gorilla suit who walks across the court.

The research has shown that the increased memory load caused by having to retain the mental image of the directions displayed on the satnav causes the blindness to other events and hazards.

Source: University College of London

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Darren Griffin

[Guivre46]

Similar to the research about trying to follow a route on a sat nav. How does keeping an image of the manouevre in your mind differ between a road atlas and a sat nav? If anything I'd have thought the sat nav needed less attention?
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Mike R [aka Wyvern46]
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[kevinx]

It's even MORE dangerous driving without common sense,

(for the idiots who end up in streams etc, and blame their sat nav)

Can they say 'RED' backwards?? ;-)
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[M8TJT]

You are far more likely to stop to read a map.

[Anita]

[253]

[IanS100]

As has been said, I think it's a lot more distracting trying to remember directions from a map, but it's not just sat navs, what about volume of traffic, complicated road layouts, traffic signs, one way systems, speed cameras and traffic calming etc etc, thye're all adding to increased memory & work load. In the face of all those I'd rather have a sat nav than paper maps, notes or trying to remember where I'm going
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Galaxy Note 4 / TomTom GO : CamerAlert : CoPilot

[M8TJT]

But those things are normal driving 'hazards' for which you don't have to remember and can be seen by looking out of the window. I agree that I would prefer a satnav to paper maps, but that's not the point that the University were making. It is generally accepted that phone calls distract a great deal even when hands free, the University is just effectively saying that the satnav does it as well.

[Gl3n]

Have to agree. Nearly had a head on the other day as the other driver was on the wrong side of the road going the wrong way through a junction (as in the wrong side of the small island/bollard) and peering around the satnav as it was right in front of them on the windscreen.

[M8TJT]

I don't think that that was the point the University were making, but equally as valid and illegal

[Neil_mellerick]

What always amazes me is the number of people (including a TV reporter during this week's Panorama program) who place the SatNav unit directly in their line of sight on the windscreen thereby significantly reducing their view of road obstacles, particularly the nearside kerb/pavement.

The differences between a paper map and a SatNav is that the paper map is a single image which is retained as a snapshot, but the SatNav is a moving image, requiring a huge amount more processing power from the visual cortex, which can interrupt other visual streams.

[navtrav]

Grief, there are all sorts of distractions that could cause us to crash - two kids fighting in the back for stressed out mum just one example.

It's a marvel that universities are allowed to waste money researching the obvious but equally a marvel that we're not all involved in a crash every day.
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Tim
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Samsung Galaxy S4, Galaxy Tablet S, TomTom. Osmand+ and Sygic. Ex-TomTom Go 1000 Live, ex-TomTom Go 700, ex-TomTom truck, ex Navman/Ipaq

[nickhoare]

[ianhb]

The study only gives SatNav use as an example of the effect, it was not a study involving or examining SatNav use. A discussion of the study is equally valid on a Basketball playing Gorillas forum, as on this one

Another example of the effect, as experienced by two friends of mine many years ago, is a driver focussing on looking for a side road, or direction sign, to a particular place, and then turning right into that side road, without 'seeing' the immediate oncoming car. Two cars were written off, but fortunately no people; if the concentrating driver had had a passenger, the story would have been different.

[JimmyTheHand]

It would be interesting to see whether regular use of a SatNav reduces the amount of brain processing required to follow a strange route - when I first got one I used it on my regular routes to and from work for quite a while, so when I went somewhere I didn't know, I could follow it without thinking about it.

Because the sat nav only tends to give limited information a lot of it will become ingrained as habit, e.g. turn right on roundabout xth exit just becomes a case of recalling not remembering a symbol which I believe is less effort.

Similarly the 3d view ahead, is just showing you a representation of what you see out of the window - therefore there is little work for the brain to translate into which road/junction/exit to take.
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J.

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