Naw, I’m only joking, I don’t have a sat-nav, I find no interest in sitting in traffic looking at a four inch screen, wondering where Westmoreland Street is, only to look up and realise I’m in Westmoreland Street already. Likewise, the thoughts of driving down the M50 at 120KPh with my eyes concentrated on a visual display screen that appears to be moving as I swerve and turn, echoes all the thoughts of irresponsible driving. Now at one time we had all the rules and regulations about wearing seat belts. We were constantly bombarded with advertisements such as ‘clunk-click every trip’ while at the same time taxi drivers (until recently) drove around with the state’s approval and agreement that taxi drivers do not have accidents, do not drive irresponsibly and therefore do not need to wear seat belts. That all changed when an unfortunate TD in Dail Eireann was nearly run over by an irresponsible house janitor pushing a waste disposal bin on wheels, who then informed the TD that the incident would not have taken place if he (the janitor and not the TD) had been strapped-in by a harness to the bin concerned. Walla, the minister suddenly thought ‘Oh it’s true, we really need everybody to wear seat belts’. Hence, everybody needs to wear seat belts, well nearly everybody.
Now take for example last Monday night when I seen a Garda car screaming down the Whitehall Road, blue light flashing, headlights going on and off, cars ducking and diving to get out of the way, it must be a big one I said to myself, why wouldn’t it be, the Garda was steering with one hand as he held a mobile phone to his ear in the other. There was no sat-nav in the vehicle and besides, if he had to use the phone while at the same time watch the sat-nav, who in the name of Jasus is going to steer the car? Ah ye, I forgot he has a partner, sorry my mistake. While I find the use of mobile phone dangerous when driving, I find the need to stare at a four inch screen, which at the best of times is placed away from the wider angle of observation, is far more dangerous and potentially life threatening than holding a mobile phone in your hand while steering with the other. If I’m wrong then why are member’s of a state body, which is supposed to uphold all the concepts of road safety, allowed to and be exempt from prosecution for using a mobile phone while driving a motor vehicle? Now I’m not knocking the Garda, in fact I understand their reasons for having to use a mobile phone in the course of their duty, what I cannot understand is the RSA hype about using a mobile phone while driving, especially when their thinking says a ‘wrong’ is a ‘wrong’ but under certain circumstances a ‘wrong’ suddenly becomes a ‘right’ and everybody else must accept their ‘wrong’ being a ‘wrong’. It appears to me that the cause of all our problems is due to regulations having a variety of exemptions built into their enforcement. Vehicles with CD on their number plates are a no questions asked, pass on, taxis are commercial interests so on busy nights in the city the Gardai are stood down.
The problem gets even worse when you see mammy, after collecting her little darlings from school, carefully straps them into their seat belt in the SUV and then starts to programme her destination into her sat-nav. Fingers moving at 10 miles a minute she appears to be paying her household bill on the internet. She moves away, down the road, round the corner into a cul de sac and walla into the driveway and HOME. What took her the guts of five minutes to programme would have allowed her the time to walk, thereby affording her kids the healthy luxury of walking home from school.
Watching a sat-nav while driving is similar to driving a car, while trying to clean out a glove box. If you have to direct your attention away from the wider angle of observation in order to read what is displayed on the nav screen, then the use of sat-nav’s should be made illegal. What we must not forget is that a sat-nav is similar to a television screen; its display is constantly changing. In order to view its contents we must direct our attention towards it. We must compromise other important factors in order to mentally comprehend the information that is presented to us. We must compromise on the very basic rule of driving, the important use of observation. On a motorway or a dual-carriageway the use of a sat-nav while driving can be dangerous. On two lane roads, housing estates and country lanes and road, the use of sat-nav’s are potential life takers.
So how do we lessen the problems of this new sat-nav culture? Sat-nav’s are not just associated with boy racers or yuppies trying to impress the ladies with their command of following an arrow on a display screen. Sat-navs are problems of modern times brought about by the availability of cheap functional technologies that have a habit of infringing on other aspects of life that are of greater importance. A requirement by insurance companies for their policy holders to declare if they operate a sat-nav in their motor vehicles and the penalising of such use with higher insurance premiums, may have some effect in reducing the popularity of such devices. It would also be of beneficial use for the Gardai to note if a sat-nav was present in a vehicle when an accident occurred. While waiting for the traffic lights to turn green at the junction of Dame Street and Georges Street last Saturday, I had the pleasure of watching a video called “Trading Places†starring Eddie Murphy, from the comfort of my car. Beside me was a Honda Integra with a LCD video screen secured to the dash panel, possibly pumping out surround sound in order to deafen the outside world out of his existence. There, and attached to the windscreen was a sat-nav. The driver (probably because of a nervous disposition) moved his fingers from the nav to the monitor controls and back again. I wondered why the video was playing, for the length of time we sat in traffic his hands appeared to obscure the video screen as he pressed and touched button after button, sat-nav to video screen, video screen to sat-nav, heater, demister, sat-nav, video screen. When the lights turned green he was still moving his hands over buttons as he drove away. The possible strange reasons for him doing these things could be that he did not have a real liking for the film “Trading Places†but had an idea that everybody else outside his little realm, did.
A taxi driver literally picks up a passenger in the middle of Nassau Street, what is the next thing he does? He starts fiddling with the sat-nav in front of him. What did this poor guy do when sat-nav’s weren’t invented? Is this the answer to taxi fares being so high, as drivers wander all around the city looking for a street they passed three times with their distraught foreign visitors sitting inside? We spend millions of Euro deploying Gardai on roads capable of landing Jumbo jets, in order to catch drivers driving 10KPH over the speed limit and yet we have no laws that govern the use of sat-nav’s in motor vehicles. I have often said that the main thrust of RSA road safety initiatives is not to save lives but to secure on behalf of the state easily secured revenue from the enforcement of laws that are guaranteed to be broken on a regular basis by motorists. After all, how do you prosecute a motorist for viewing a sat-nav when driving a vehicle, if the prosecuting Garda cannot prove in court that the defendant had the nav to his ear and was therefore using the nav in breach of a driving regulation? Difficult methods of securing revenue therefore don’t regulate its use.