Blame the driver, not the sat nav, for car accidents

I have to agree with you, Em. And I think that accidents ascribed to a satnav are actually caused by everything but.

What a satnav – badly programmed or inaccurate – can do, though, is to lead you inappropriately where you should not go. And if you are then so surprised at, for example, finding yourself going the wrong way up a one-way-street, that you crash into an oncoming car, then of course it’s the satnav’s fault! Otherwise it might be yours!

And if you’re peering at the screen, which might be clearer to understand, and overshoot a junction and hit another vehicle: why, the satnav’s to blame! It should have been clearer!

So I agree with you. The survey is about the way that people ascribe blame in an incident, not about the actual cause. Maybe this is rich research ground for a behavioural psychologist!

Since lamp posts and stationary cars have been blamed for causing accidents perhaps the sat nav could be exonerated.

Why is it that every time we have a topic related to motoring, some people get worked up and critical of other drivers. One of the best ways to keep our roads safe is to be patient and tolerant.

I find that my sat nav encourages me to drive more slowly. Without it, I often assume I will arrive late for a meeting but the sat nav generally shows that I will arrive in good time. It also provides confirmation of speed limits in between signs.

‘Incredible’ 🙂

You will never get a job in popular journalism, Em, if you reject the language – so stick around here and carry on dispensing down-to-earth common sense.

Fine, Alan, but we’re discussing satnavs here as the cause of accidents. It’s the driver’s responsibility not to trust a satnav so entirely that he drives into a river because the marked route goes there. And it’s not dangerous to find that you drive to a non-existent petrol station and risk being stranded, just intensely irritating. Surely you wouldn’t say that rage caused by such defects isn’t the driver’s fault? My whole point, and author Dave Evans’, is the driver causes the incidents, not the machine.

As the title says, Julian, “blame the driver, not the satnav”. It’s a driver’s responsibility to be in the right place, not the machine’s. Long before satnav, I recall driving the wrong way round a deserted roundabout in eastern France – with a police patrol car crew watching! If there had been traffic on the roundabout, I’d have realized. The police driver just shook his head at me, I’m glad to say – “Crazy Rosbif!”

It’s a sorry place for us all to be in, indeed, M.

My satnav shows an extra screen full of stuff on start-up since my last update last week. It won’t let me get going without agreeing to an on-screen legal notice, stating:

“It is your responsibility to observe safe driving practices and to place, secure and use your produce in a manner that will not cause accidents, personal injury and property damage. Do not operate your product while driving.

“TomTom does not guarantee the error-free operation of your product, nor the completeness or accuracy of the services or any content provided hereon. TomTom does not accept and disclaims and liability for any loss or damage arising out of or in connection with the use or inability to use the services or any content.”

It then continues with the old message which has been on the unit since I bought it several years ago:

“Drive Safely

Drive responsibly and observe safe driving practice:

– Place, secure and use your TomTom product in a manner that will not cause accidents, personal injury or property damage.

– Always check the traffic situation before you follow a spoken instruction and obey road signs and traffic rules.

– Do not operate your product while driving.

Press Continue…”

I think that sums it all up. It’s a pity that the court wasn’t clearer in the case you mention – though, as you said, any ruling on responsibility won’t change the main punishment, which will be with him all his life. My dad, decades ago, killed by crushing a little boy who rushed out from between parked cars. The van was only travelling slowly, as he was being careful in a narrow street, and the court found him not to be responsible at all. But it haunted him till he died.

Absolutely! But a clever lawyer will find any excuse.

I can see where you’re coming from, Alex – and that’s certainly a problem for a few sat-nav users who have problems with the necessary multi-tasking that driving is.

To take your argument further, ‘taking your eyes off the road’ is what we mustn’t do. So no glancing at the instruments, no checking the rear-view mirror, for example, and certainly no looking around as we drive. And we can treat our other senses the same way – any distractions from the plain task of driving could cause an accident if they come at just the wrong moment. So, keep your hands on the wheel – no reaching for a control, let alone the radio. No gear changing. Keep your ears ready for warnings – so no listening to passengers (who must be totally silent), no radio on. And so on.

Don’t think I’m criticizing – all these points have been raised by road safety experts, who have tried to measure the proportionate impact of different kinds of distraction from full attention ahead, and their likely impact on hazard perception. There turn out to be three broad classes of distraction:

1) things that need our major attention, which are seriously implicated in horrible crashes: phoning someone, composing a text message, watching a video, for example – and yes, trying to help a fractious or howling child while still driving, too.

2) minor but unnecessary distractions, which can be switched out of your attention instantly: listening to and talking to a passenger, the radio, operating electric windows and heating, for example. A ‘sensible’ driver will only give passing attention to these, all the while aware of what’s coming up ahead and picking a quiet moment, but they have been the cause of bad accidents when the driver gave them too much attention. It’s best to stop if that’s safer.

3) necessary distractions from the road ahead which are needed to drive and navigate safely, such as changing gear, checking the instruments and observing rear, far ahead and sides. All of these take place for moments only so that the immediate forward area is completely observed – and most drivers do these things every few seconds without consciously thinking about it, and safely. Only on very rare occasions would, say, glancing into a mirror, be enough of a distraction to be dangerous – once in tens of millions of occasions.

The sat-nav is placed in the third group by most experts, regarded as a navigational instrument. Because it is auditory as well as visual, the driver can use momentary visual cues to augment the spoken warnings and instructions, seamlessly incorporating navigation by sat-nav into other visual cues without danger. And the sat-nav gives an excellent far-front observation for planning and hazard preparation. Used like this, a sat-nav is safer than not having one when the driver is also navigating, and about as safe as having a trusted navigator calling directions and cues (no normal driver totally relies on another person to do this – only Special Section Rallying works this way, and is terrifying for a beginner).

So, summing up, I disagree with you that the visuals on a sat-nav should be blanked while driving. This would increase hazard risk, by ignoring an important aid to driving safely. But if you personally cannot drag your eyes from the screen when you mean only to glance at it, you would be wise, as you suggest, to cover the sat-nav while driving.

I have tried using satnavs without looking at the screen and that has been remarkably unhelpful. My satnav helps ensure that I know what I am doing at roundabouts and keep in the correct lane at complex road networks. I reckon that constantly checking the speedometer and speed limit signs is more distracting.

I suggest that the satnav is in front of the driver and includes the actual speed and speed limit for the road, automatically updated to accommodate temporary restrictions that are in force.

@Em.
Yes I have: driving though central Jamaica, luckily the gorge was only 200 ft deep with the sides covered in thick vegetation and I was in a Toyota Hilux. More of a slow motion roll than a death dive.
Moral, don’t drive on foggy nights along winding, treacherous, unguarded mountain roads.
I still don’t use a satnav, but if that is what they do now I might try one, can you give me the make & model of the one that does this.

Hi, M.
Almost all sat-navs will do this. I find the best are the ones (most, again) which can show you a 3D view, so the closest bends are large, and the territory in the distance smaller, but allowing you to plan well ahead. Even in thick night fog, it’s almost good enough to be like the view from the cabin of a very high vehicle. And most, again, can give you a ‘night view’, which switches colours to lines on a black background which don’t give glare to night-adjusted eyes. The better sat-navs allow you a choice of such colour and layout schemes.

This is why advance planning as well as getting a good view of what you’re coming to in the next few seconds is so much easier and safer with sat-nav help. And it IS only help, one more aid to driving in better safety. The point is that a sat-nav combines map data about the road, its junctions and its environs with an accurate GPS marker for exactly where you are. Using this, it can provide far more services than simply a ‘turn left here’ type of help. That service alone was a decade ago. In this forum so far, half-a-dozen other aids haven’t even been mentioned.

Absolutely. Many people criticise satnavs before they try them. Fortunately I was not one of them but I wish I had been an early adopter rather than glancing at road maps when it was safe – and sometimes unsafe – to do so.

I do believe that all satnavs maps should update automatically, for maximum safety so that users are always using the most accurate information.

Including the facility to answer the phone does not demonstrate a responsible attitude of the car manufacturer, in my humble opinion. Two steps forward and one step back.

I strongly agree that cars should not be able to exceed the national speed limit. That would be easy to achieve in modern vehicles with computer control. Some motorists claim that being able to exceed speed limits is necessary to get out of dangerous situations. I can’t remember examples of this in over 40 years of driving.

In the past two years I have had to take prompt action to avoid three collisions with drivers distracted by using hands-free phones at roundabouts. (Either that or they were talking to themselves.) I am not claiming that hands-free phones are always dangerous, but I don’t think it is too much to expect a driver to stop their car before making or receiving a call.