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Most drivers who own cars with built-in GPS systems use phones for directions

money.cnn.com

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Re: Most drivers who own cars with built-in GPS systems use phones for directions

#341

Post by bartread »

copperx wrote: post #230
lukaslalinsky wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars can generally go much faster than the maximum speed limit, so it wouldn't be the first time the car allows you to do something against the law.

I'm honestly surprised they don't restrict that. Does anybody know why? I know different states have different speed limits, but I think a 85mph speed limit could cover them all. Is it because Canada and Mexico? They have lower speed limits. Is it because the car could be exported to Germany and driven on the Autobahn? or what?

I wonder if it's perhaps because of industry lobbying. The incentive to buy a 400+ BHP BMW M3 (or whatever) would probably be somewhat stymied if it were limited to a mere 85mph.

And there are plenty of way less expensive cars out there with 300+ BHP. Again, not much point if you're limited to 85mph, which means the car industry has one less lever to pull to charge premium prices for premium models, and thus makes less money. And we're talking about an industry that's already, at least in some quarters, struggling.

(This could be complete nonsense of course.)

Re: Most drivers who own cars with built-in GPS systems use phones for directions

#343

Post by pluma »

brusch64 wrote: post #301
dreamcompiler wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main reason car companies don't put (un-overridable) governors for 85mph in cars is that their sales would instantly plummet. That said, all "fast" cars sold in the US do have governors at 140 mph if memory serves. The same car sold in Germany has no such governor.

As much as I remember there is a gentleman's agreement between the German car makers that they restrict the motor power after 300 km/h (about 190 mph). A teacher told me that this should be the velocity a normal untrained person is safe to drive on the German autobahn. They circumvent this with their own car tuners which release the cars without this restrictions (AMG for Mercedes Benz as an example)

> 300 km/h [..] normal untrained person is safe to drive on the German autobahn

German here. No normal untrained person should be driving at those speeds. The general recommended speed for the autobahn is 130 km/h. Typical speeds on the middle and left lanes are up to 200 km/h though most days the typical "high" speed is probably closer to 170 or 180.

With good weather, no traffic and no roadworks (hah) you might be able to go over 200 km/h for a while but unless it's a long straight stretch you're probably way out of your comfort zone unless you're an experienced driver.

I would say a normal untrained person is safe to drive at speeds up to about 180 km/h. Most ordinary cars seem to handle noticeably worse with every 10 you go beyond 160 km/h or so.

And of course the entire discussion of typical speeds is philosphical when most of the Autobahn has speed limits (roadworks often limit the speed to 60 or even 40 km/h (or less) and even on normal parts the speed limit frequently is as low as 120, 100 or 80 km/h).

Re: Most drivers who own cars with built-in GPS systems use phones for directions

#344

Post by dismantlethesun »

panic wrote: post #337
dingaling wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and my phone has no problems finding GPS and I have navigation instructions pulled up in about 5 seconds. That's because your phone isn't actually using GPS ( e.g. Navstar or Glonass ) at that point, it's using cell triangulation or wifi-based location. For example the fastest possible first-fix with Navstar from a warm-start, using cached prior-location and ephemerides, is 30 seconds[0]. From a cold ( position-unk…

How often do cars change position while powered down? That is, why not always (even on "cold start") use the last known position as a starting guess? How do phones get GPS-quality location data even immediately after being rebooted?

Annectodatally, I remember that some years ago my phone used to take 5-10 minutes to find GPS whenever I asked for directions. Now adays, it's instantaneous.

The software has improved dramatically, using some combination of previously saved location, WIFI triangulation, and dead reconning to figure out a near accurate location to within 50 feet so long as you're in a city.

Car navigation systems can do better. They're not even 'pure' GPS services, they have access to mobile cell, they do online updates for maps, and their accelerometers are far better than phones. The software though is simply worse than what Google can provide.

Re: Most drivers who own cars with built-in GPS systems use phones for directions

#345

Post by dismantlethesun »

lagadu wrote: post #325
shalmanese wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always been puzzled as to why cars don't come with speed governing as a (default off) option. I'd love to be able to lend my car to my child with the max speed set to 60mph or govern my speed to 65 on long freeway trips so I don't have to constantly check my speedometer (this is different from cruise control because I could easily slow down below 65, just never go above it).

My car has that. I can configure one of the car keys to only allow a certain max speed whenever it's used with the car. It's called valet mode IIRC.

What car do you have?

Re: Most drivers who own cars with built-in GPS systems use phones for directions

#346

Post by kalleboo »

maaaats wrote: post #174
gknoy wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realize this isn't a perfect counter, but Google Maps (on Android, and probably iOS) allows you to download "offline areas", and you can store just about many of them as your phone has storage for. This means that as part of your trip preparation, you can download the maps and use them on your trip in the boonies. I don't know how well it _uses_ them, nor what amount of data connection it still wants, but it saved…

The offline areas are useless. They are basically just prefetching the map-tiles. You can't do anything while not online, not search in the offline area, map a route or anything like that. Here maps blows this out of the water in comparison.

That used to be the case but a year or two ago they vastly expanded the offline functionality.

Re: Most drivers who own cars with built-in GPS systems use phones for directions

#347

Post by pc86 »

Kadin wrote: post #247
copperx wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm honestly surprised they don't restrict that. Does anybody know why? I know different states have different speed limits, but I think a 85mph speed limit could cover them all. Is it because Canada and Mexico? They have lower speed limits. Is it because the car could be exported to Germany and driven on the Autobahn? or what?

There were, until very recently, some roads in Montana that didn't have any speed limit during the day. They provided at least a legal justification that there was a legitimate on-road use case for going more than 85MPH. I believe Montana gave that up in the last few years, so there wouldn't be much of a case against putting an 85MPH governor in cars, except I guess against the possibility that some state might at so…

> there wouldn't be much of a case against putting an 85MPH governor in cars

There are plenty of reasons not to do it. A lot of people take cars to the track, and not just those with high performance vehicles. I've seen people drag racing stock Camrys at a legit quarter mile track just because they wanted to see what it could do (not much).

Re: Most drivers who own cars with built-in GPS systems use phones for directions

#348

Post by leppr »

The tragedy of proprietary technology. There is a need for competition so sure, saying "let's integrate Google Maps into everything" might not be a win for us in the long term, but we don't need a hundred different navigation systems. Just integrate one of the top players in the field and be done with it. Better yet, open the damn design to allow modification by customers (/local garages).

Re: Most drivers who own cars with built-in GPS systems use phones for directions

#349

Post by jmcdiesel »

Symbiote wrote: post #302
hx87 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Side streets need to support their fair share of traffic. Most cars these days are very quiet, barring the occasional beater, utility truck, and ricer. That being said, if they slow cars down Waze will direct less drivers to them.

Side streets need to support their fair share of children walking to school, bicycles, conversations and not-polluted air. Their fair share of traffic is very low, only traffic to or from a building on the street.

Those side streets were funded with the same public money as the big ones... and the idea that residents somehow have special rights to them is rather wrong.

Property owners claiming rights to how public property near them is used is rediculous

Re: Most drivers who own cars with built-in GPS systems use phones for directions

#350

Post by InclinedPlane »

dingaling wrote: post #333
bvinc wrote: post #265

I had an interesting experience recently that I think summarizes this whole problem. I was in another city and rented a car and it came with navigation. I knew I could just use my phone, but I decided to use the navigation that the rental car came with, just for fun. 1. First, I knew the name of my hotel, but not the address. I tried to search the business directory. I had to input the CITY AND STATE, which is painfu…

> and my phone has no problems finding GPS and I have navigation instructions pulled up in about 5 seconds. That's because your phone isn't actually using GPS ( e.g. Navstar or Glonass ) at that point, it's using cell triangulation or wifi-based location. For example the fastest possible first-fix with Navstar from a warm-start, using cached prior-location and ephemerides, is 30 seconds[0]. From a cold ( position-unk…

A warm start is actually typically faster than 30 seconds, averaging closer to 20 seconds. Additionally, almost all fixes using smart phones are hot starts. This is because smartphones use assisted GPS, they download almanac and ephemeris data not from the GPS network itself (where they are broadcast every 12.5 minutes and 30 seconds, respectively) but over a data network, in seconds. Similarly, smartphones have a pretty good idea of where they are already, because they keep track of their positions historically and they use cell tower triangulation as a secondary location system. From a hot start a GPS receiver could get a fix in only a handful of seconds, potentially.
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