U.S. Transportation Department Could Regulate Smartphone Navigation

Word on the street has it that the U.S. Transportation Department could be looking at the possibility of introducing tougher regulatory control over mobile navigation systems in vehicles as well as on your smartphone or tablet. The U.S. Transportation Department touts that this is so because they would like to play a role in cases where apps happen to end up as a danger to those who share the road with you. Of course, there were cases in the past where GPS failed to get a person to the right destination, but rather, in the wrong direction for more than 900 miles, while another mishap involved the fatal shooting of a man after he arrived at the wrong house.

Basically, the whole idea of regulating in-vehicle navigation is to limit the instances of distracted driving, including voluntary rules which will ensure one’s interaction with such navigational systems will be limited to just a couple of seconds each time, with a maximum of sixteen seconds altogether. The Transportation Department and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have an inkling that they could enforce such rules, although they are looking to gain the ability to write all of these into law officially.

Such restrictions will most likely extend to devices such as smartphones and tablets, inclusive of navigation apps in the vein of Google Maps, Apple Maps, Bing Maps, and Waze. Those who support such an initiative claim that a gold standard needs to be established across all navigation systems, so that it reduces the possibility of human error while driving, concentrating more on the road than the device itself.

Edwin Kee
Categories: Transportation
Tags: GPS, navigation