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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

#361

Post by saiya-jin »

pluma wrote: post #343
brusch64 wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This depends on the car, the better the car, the more stable it feels at higher speeds, especially when maneuvering. In cheap weak ones 130 kmh feels like it's taking off, in great ones 200 kmh feels... adequate.

I got once 220 kmh with by older BMW 330d on unrestricted part of German highway, but it's quite stressful experience. You feel via your senses how fast everything is, you feel how long it takes for car to break to something more reasonable (ie 150) because of other drivers - this happens all the times, so it's almost never a smooth ride. And you know that any issue with the car like tire blowing means instant horrible death, and probably not only yourself.

Most normal tires have rating till only 220 (that is for new ones!), at speeds around 250 and more you will trash whole tires in 1 day (and you need good ones, not some cheap chinese crap with no grip), and whole car is just suffering much much more compared to regular driving.

Interesting one time experience, but even me I don't go over 150-160 on an empty road during day.

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

#362

Post by saiya-jin »

Ntrails wrote: post #315
gambiting wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most cruise control systems come with a limiter as well though, so you can set a limit and then the car will never exceed it. Also, no offence, but if you can't trust your kid with a car, then maybe you shouldn't be lending them it in the first place? Or get them a less powerful car for the start?

Depending on where you live and the sorts of roads you drive, accidents often come from corners/junctions/road conditions/acceleration etc rather than just MAX_SPEED. A speed limiter is an incredibly one dimensional tool to try and modify accident chance.

i can imagine quite a few situations where any reasonably small limit on speed would end up in horrible crash (ie overtaking trucks in single lane mountain roads)

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

#363

Post by saiya-jin »

josephg wrote: post #330
stuffmatters wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then you can't charge it. Terrible trade-off.

I know its trendy right now to hate on the removal of the 35mm headphone jack but this comment is simply false. You can charge it while using the headphone jack - you just need a silly dongle or a dock to do it. http://www.belkin.com/au/p/P-F8J198/ http://www.apple.com/au/shop/product/MGRM2AM/A/iphone-lightn...

which is less than any super cheap android/whatever can do. seriously, wrong and arrogant move. if we users are stupid enough to vote with our money for this, then of course it's all our fault collectively. i know i won't

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

#364

Post by 3pt14159 »

saiya-jin wrote: post #358
3pt14159 wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but going higher than say 150 km/h for more than 10 seconds the car could phone that in and you'd have to justify it to the police or face a steep fine.

I would never pay a single unit of currency for such a car, even subsidized, and neither would most of humanity, including politicians. I see plenty of very dangerous driving within speed limits, ie people unable to keep in their lane, playing with cellphone, randomly breaking in semi-empty roads and so on. These are my experiences from highways from most weekends. In towns, speed limits make much more sense and coul…

Why?

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

#365

Post by 3pt14159 »

saiya-jin wrote: post #358
3pt14159 wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but going higher than say 150 km/h for more than 10 seconds the car could phone that in and you'd have to justify it to the police or face a steep fine.

I would never pay a single unit of currency for such a car, even subsidized, and neither would most of humanity, including politicians. I see plenty of very dangerous driving within speed limits, ie people unable to keep in their lane, playing with cellphone, randomly breaking in semi-empty roads and so on. These are my experiences from highways from most weekends. In towns, speed limits make much more sense and coul…

Why?

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

#366

Post by zeveb »

joezydeco wrote: post #221
sliken wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With 64GB MicroSD cards running for $20 or so are you really phone limited? How many CDs do you have? My note4 has 32GB (internal) and a 64GB microsd.

The Mazda Connect has two USB ports in the dashboard. You can charge a phone with one and plug a multi-terabyte portable drive full of MP3s into the other.

> You can charge a phone with one and plug a multi-terabyte portable drive full of MP3s into the other.

Will it recognise an ext4-formatted drive, or does it require FAT, NTFS or something else?

Perhaps there are two people in the car charging their phones?

I really, really don't understand the hatred for CDs. Why, someone downvoted my original comment because I noted that they can be useful for a long road trip! Honestly, I'd expect that to be non-controversial: CDs require no data connexion; they are a physical audio format, which means that they can be converted to MP3, FLAC or whatever else one likes; they are owned by you, unlike a streaming music service's tracks.

I think that they still have their use cases.

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

#367

Post by brewdad »

kozak wrote: post #360
u801e wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Certainly, but cars are also mandated to have a weight sensor in the passenger seat to disable the passenger side airbag when there isn't an adult sitting there (so they don't kill children in car seats). On a somewhat related note, this graph[1] show that the deaths of children in cars due to heat stroke started increasing after 1998 (which is when passenger side airbags were mandatory equipment in new vehicles).…

What's the connection between airbags and heat strokes?

Car seats can no longer safely be placed in the front seat due to the air bag risks. Children who fall asleep in the back seat combined with sleep deprived parents can lead to an "out of sight, out of mind" scenario where children are forgotten in the back seat of cars. It happens every summer.

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

#368

Post by danpat »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #322
danpat wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm paid to work on navigation software: http://www.project-osrm.org/ The answer to your question is: because it's hard to make some of these adjustments on-the-fly and still have reasonably fast queries. On embedded devices, space and processing power are limited - so you need to perform optimizations to speed things up so it's usable. These optimizations usually limit the flexibility of features like you're request…

Just having the option to specify "No left turns" would be immensely helpful. I believe UPS has done this for years to streamline their delivery-truck routes, albeit probably not in real time.

Just for kicks, I used OSRM and added a large time penalty for taking left-hand turns.

Here's the kind of route you get:

http://imgur.com/VW63fq1

In reality, the metric probably needs to be a lot more complex than what I hacked together here. It's actually more like "don't turn left across traffic, left turns are ok onto one-way streets, etc", my metric was simply based on turn angle, and there are a bunch of scenarios where that falls down.

The rule probably works well in travelling salesman-like scenarios - you want to optimize the route to deliver multiple packages.

Having played with adjusting these kinds of metrics quite a bit, it's never as easy as you want :-(

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

#369

Post by zeveb »

sliken wrote: post #194
zeveb wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A CD player's still convenient on a long road trip when one wants to listen to one's own music, not the radio or the satellite. A phone can only hold so much!

With 64GB MicroSD cards running for $20 or so are you really phone limited? How many CDs do you have? My note4 has 32GB (internal) and a 64GB microsd.

Many phones don't support SD cards. I still have my old travel book of CDs — it's dozens & dozens of them.

(as an aside, why am I getting hit with 'you're submitting too fast' recently? I'm really not submitting that many comments!)

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

#370

Post by kalleboo »

Someone1234 wrote: post #117
salmonlogs wrote: post #114

Reading the comments I appear to be the exception. I lease a 2015 BMW 4-series which I added "Professional Media" to and the nav works really well. I've driven plenty of other cars where the nav is useless, but not all are bad. Reasons to use it over my phone: * 11" screen shows me a high quality map overlayed with current traffic, with 1/3 split for lane guidance when needed * Directions also shown directly on the d…

You aren't really the exception, instead you're just fortunate enough to have one of the few in-dash navigation systems which isn't absolutely terrible. Most of the features you've named are exactly what Android Auto/Carplay provide, but without limiting you to just a single maps/navigation vendor. You're likely leasing that vehicle for 1-3 years. Do you think that if you purchased that 4-series that the navigation w…

CarPlay also limits to you to one map provider - Apple Maps
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