Theme of the Day One - Relying on Technology to ill effect.

Sometimes when I'm futzing around the web looking for interesting pieces of news a theme just seems to pop out at me. Today it happens to be the over reliance and distractions of technology.

The first story is an old one
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The elderly German motorist set out sans a clue of what route(s) he'd be taking to reach his destination, but obviously felt that his trusty navigation unit knew far more about the highways and byways than he did. After blatantly ignoring a prominent "closed for construction" sign, he threw common sense to the wind and put that 4MATIC system to good use by wheeling over "a number of warnings and barricades" in search of his next landmark. A police spokeperson said frankly: "His trip finally ended when he wound up crashing into a pile of sand."

The second story has the same moral as the first ;)

The driver of a £96k Mercedes SL500 had a lucky escape after her satnav directed her down a winding track and straight into the River Sence in Sheepy Magna, Leicestershire, the Leicester Mercury reports.

The 28-year-old woman - apparently on her way to a Christening on 3 March - ignored signposts indicating the track was unsuitable for motor vehicles and gamely ploughed into the watercourse. Unfortunately, the river was "swollen after heavy rain in recent floods" and quickly overcame the Merc, "gushing through the car" and sweeping it 200 metres downstream "bouncing from one river bank to the other, as the woman frantically tried to smash the windows with her feet".

And finally the most surprising (well not really at all...) new study to come out...

A new study conducted by Drexel University found that using an iPod while driving has "significant effect" on driver performance. The study monitored 12 people who were asked to "drive" in a simulator while selecting and playing music, video and podcasts on their iPods. The result? No surprise: searching for media caused drivers to slow down and veer left or right whereas watching videos (!) "significantly affected" car-following speed.

Here's what's going to happen in a few more years... beaming problems.

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Conventional wisdom suggests not relying on navigation devices nor watching videos while driving. After more than a hundred years of development, why does our most common mode of transportation still have a "steering wheel"? There is the real source of the problem.

By Matt Platte (not verified) on 27 Mar 2007 #permalink

I would like mind control steering... or perhaps teleportation like in space balls ;)

I think it may be a binding problem that surfaces specifically during parallel communication and not so much during passive sensing.