I suppose that the introduction of new technologies may raise ethical issues, and now GPS units have joined that club.  There have been recent ideas of providing people suffering from dementia with GPS tracker units so that their carers can find them more easily and providing children with GPS enabled mobile phones that inform the parents if the child moves outside a pre programmed area.

The ethical issues regarding the invasion of privacy are weighed against the requirements of duty of care/ responsibility and I guess that each individual has to make up their own mind in these cases.  However, a scheme has been piloted in North Wales, providing school children with gps enabled smart cards which are specifically aimed at monitoring their behaviour.

Another step towards “big brotherdom?”

Navevo ProNav PNN-200

The Navevo ProNav PNN-200 is designed for use for lorries, caravans and vans with route planning which gives the driver warning of height, width and weight restrictions as well as showing preferred hgv routes and where they are prohibited, steep hills, sharp bends and risks of grounding are also indicated. Designed with the professional driver in mind, these sat navs have POIs  such as truck stops, hgv fuel stations with high flow pumps and loading bays in London

I know I harp on about keeping maps in the car and using a sat nav as an aid to navigation, not a substitute for common sense.  Well, an article posted today in the Marine Corps Times, illustrates the concern in the US Marine Corps regarding the erosion of map reading skills amongst its troops.

Over reliance upon their sat nav landed a USMC foot patrol in jeopardy in Iraq when their GPS went blank.  They had a map, but no compass, or spare batteries for the gps… they were lost.  Luckily they weren’t under fire.

The thing is, rarely will our life depend upon our sat nav. If it goes down, we might get lost and waste a bit of time, unless, of course we do what it says and try to drive up a railway line!

And it used to be said that the most dangerous thing on a battlefield was a subaltern with a map!

Now that the Garmin Zumo 660 is readily available in the distribution channel, the units seem to be selling like hot  cakes!  Of course, given the specs on this sat nav, it is hardly surprising that it should become the sat nav of choice for motorcycle enthusiasts, but what is surprising is the number of units that are being sold.  Either riders have been waiting for the Zumo 660 to become available or they have decided to replace their existing units.  The other interesting fact is that quite a few of the Cardo Systems Scala Rider Q2 helmet mounted headsets are being purchased at the same time.

Mind you, with the lovely weather we have had recently and the forecasted hot summer ahead, it must be pretty wonderful riding through the countryside, easily finding those out of the way places and sharing the experience with your passenger and fellow riders.

All sat navs are dependant upon signals from the Global Positioning System (GPS) (which was developed and maintained by the US military) to determine their positions.  Now, it seems, the lack of funds to replace aging satellites is putting the integrity of the system in jeopardy.  The US Governments Accountability Office reckon that there is a 20% chance that the system have less than the required number of satellites at times, between 2011 and 2012.

The EU “Galileo” System, which is supposed to provide Europe with its own navigation system should have 4 satellites operational next year. But this won’t help if your sat nav is tuned to receive signals from the US GPS system.

There is a special promotion on the Garmin Nuvi 865T until the 22^nd May which will save you over £100 on the RRP!  Priced for a limited period at £297.99 (from an RRP of £399), the 865T has voice activated commands (so you can tell it where you wan to go and have voice controlled phone conversations), lane assist, Bluetooth and FM transmitter; in fact all the features you would expect from a top of the range Car sat nav.

This is  an ideal time to get your hands on a really great sat nav from one of the market leaders!

I announced in one of my November blogs, that TomTom had introduced a new route planning system to the GO and GO LIVE ranges of their car sat navs.  This system plans routes based upon historical information for the time of day and day of the week and avoids those areas that have bottlenecks.  Typically, planning routes with this system will give you a faster route to your destination 35% of the time (TomTom’s figures).

Well, they have now added IQ Routes to their lower priced One v5  and XL v3 units which now makes these even more attractive.