THE GOODS : High-Tech Help for Lost Drivers : In-Dash Navigation Systems Use Satellites to Map Out the Best Way to Get Where You’re Going
Voters often complain that our political leaders lack vision of where the nation is headed, but our nation’s motorists are in much worse shape: They are lost not only figuratively but literally.
General Motors officials say their studies show that motorists fail to take the most direct route 20% of the time when they drive--either because they are lost or because they take the wrong roads.
Many people in our society, including apparently well-educated people, are unable to read maps and must rely on landmarks, verbal directions or trial and error to get around. Stopping a pedestrian or asking a gas station attendant is often no help at all.
But new in-dash navigation systems will be coming on the market soon and promise to make a big difference.
Oldsmobile will be the first Big Three auto maker to introduce an in-dash navigation system, using signals from the Pentagon’s Global Positioning System satellites to provide a driver with routing information and turn-by-turn directions from a computerized voice. You simply punch in the address of where you are going and the computer software figures out how to get your there.
The Oldsmobile system will first be offered as a $2,000 option in California in coming weeks and then go on sale in other U.S. markets. Although Japanese car makers have offered such systems in Japan, none of them comes close to GM’s system in terms of offering voice commands and a satellite-based locating technology.
The price obviously will discourage a lot of buyers, but eventually these systems are going to come down to about $500, the same money many car buyers put down for car sound systems. Within a decade, 50% of new cars are expected to be ordered with the systems, said Bill Spritzer, GM’s technical director for intelligent vehicle highway systems.
A lot of automobile electronics have been long on high-technology glitz but short on usefulness for the driver. I put electronic dashboards and heads-up windshield displays in this category, but not the navigation systems.
The Oldsmobile system has a receiver that can tap signals from orbiting satellites 11,000 miles above Earth and, with some sophisticated software, determine the car’s location anywhere on Earth within 100 meters.
The Oldsmobile system will have a CD-ROM player and with only four disks the system will have digital-based maps of every street in America, displayed on a four-inch full-color screen. If you are lost, you can push a button and the system will give your current address and show your location on the map.
Ultimately, these systems will be linked to information systems that broadcast up-to-the-second information about freeway jams and provide alternative routing. GM demonstrated this sort of a system, which was even able to estimate driving time based on traffic conditions, in a test called Traveltek in Orlando, Fla.
The system will be almost unlimited in what information it could deliver: the CD-ROM player could someday contain a directory of restaurants, gas stations and other businesses. If you want the nearest McDonald’s or the nearest muffler shop, the dashboard screen would display the options and the computerized voice would tell you how to get there. Another big feature of the future system would be its ability to automatically alert police in the event of an accident.
GM has already started a pilot program with Avis, renting the cars equipped with the system in San Jose. Results so far are encouraging, a GM spokeswoman said.
“The introduction and use of these systems will help ensure that getting lost when driving in unfamiliar surroundings is very much a thing of the past,” said Oldsmobile General Manager John Rock.
