Use iPods Cautiously While Driving

On 5/4/2007 7:37 AM, "jonnykai1mac.com" <jonnykai1mac.com> spake thus:

> what caused her to not see [the ambulance] is not known...

Quite possibly fiddling with the iPod. That would be more than enough
distraction.

Driving with an iPod in your ears is bad enough (which is why I always run
mine through the car stereo), but I'm absolutely horrified at the number of
cyclists I see wearing iPods, even in heavy traffic. That's bordering on
suicidal! I NEVER use my iPod while cycling. I might use it while walking,
but I never turn it up so far that I can't hear what's going on around me.

--
Nigel Stanger, Dunedin, NEW ZEALAND.
http://xri.net/=nigel.stanger

On Apr 4, 2007, at 12:37 PM, jonnykai1mac.com wrote:

> the ambulance driver said the last thing he saw was pigtails,
> and ipod earplug lines hanging from her ears...

That is illegal in Washington State (and likely elsewhere). Not
because of the iPod, but because you can't cover both ears while
driving. (I haven't read the statute, so I don't know whether it
goes on to say you can't cover the working ear if only one works, but
it likely should.)

Shortly after I bought my first iPod, I drove with both ears covered
and it felt wrong at the first intersection I approached, so I
stopped doing it.

   --John

Nigel et al

At 4:39 AM -0700 4/5/07, Nigel Stanger wrote:
>Driving with an iPod in your ears is bad enough (which is why I always run
>mine through the car stereo), but I'm absolutely horrified at the number of
>cyclists I see wearing iPods, even in heavy traffic. That's bordering on
>suicidal! I NEVER use my iPod while cycling. I might use it while walking,
>but I never turn it up so far that I can't hear what's going on around me.

What's the difference?

If it is so loud that you can't hear what's going on around you, and
you are around moving cars, that's bad.

If it is not so loud that you can't hear what's going on around you,
that's not so bad.

What does it matter if that is because of headphones or super loud
speakers? What is the salient difference between walking, biking and
driving?

(Yes, I know that bikers and walkers are more vulnerable when hit by
big fast hunks of metal. Yes, I know that bikers tend to be closer to
cars. At the same time, the fast you are traveling, the shorter time
you have to react. Regardless, however, the speed of the car that is
about to hit you is often biggest problem. And if the speeding mack
truck hits you, you're screwed regardless of your means of
transportation.)

--
=Alex Hoffman
Leadership Policy & Politics
Teachers College, Columbia University

Also watch out for the video screens in some cars. For the first few
days after I got my Prius I fiddled around with the display a lot. Now
I only glance at the energy screen when I stop.

--On April 8, 2007 9:29:10 AM -0700 Mike Cohen <macmegasitegmail.com>
wrote:

> Also watch out for the video screens in some cars. For the first few
> days after I got my Prius I fiddled around with the display a lot. Now
> I only glance at the energy screen when I stop.

Oh yeah, the gas mileage indicator screen is like a video game. I still
look at mine frequently (coming up on 5 years of owning my prius), but not
as much as when I first got it and definitely not when in a lot of traffic.

I rarely plug my ipod into my car (there is no integration on the early
model prius, not sure about the current model) but when I do the only
control I hit is the advance to next song when something comes on I don't
like.

If a song comes on I want to know the name of (I have tons of music, all
legal, that I don't know the name of -- 3 years of SXSW downloads is around
10 GB alone) I wait 'til I resync my iPod and then sort by play time to
find the song again.

At 15:26 04/06/07 -0700, Alexander Hoffman wrote:
>If it is not so loud that you can't hear what's going on around you,
>that's not so bad.

This misses the issue of distraction. How serious distraction is varies
from person to person.

>What does it matter if that is because of headphones or super loud speakers?

I don't recall anyone saying that super loud speakers aren't bad.

> What is the salient difference between walking, biking and driving?

For me, sound is a far more important clue to conditions on a bicycle than
in a car, so I would strongly dislike adding a distracting sound when I'm
bicycling. (I've never even tried.) It's not as important when I'm walking.

>Regardless, however, the speed of the car that is about to hit you is
>often biggest problem.

Low speed collisions -- even simple falls -- can be deadly to bicyclists.
It isn't the car overtaking that's usually the problem, but the one that
doesn't see you entering an intersection. In both cases, awareness of the
situation can be life-saving, usually in the form of taking action to make
the driver aware of you. (There usually isn't time for escape measures.) It
can also be live-saving to pick up clues to driver behavior which make you
more defensive.

BTW, in a general forum the terms "biking" and "cycling" are ambiguous,
since both are used by both bicyclists and motorcyclists. I have assumed
that the comments in this thread refer to bicycling.

Edward
--
Art works by Melynda Reid: http://paleo.org

The newer Prius still has no integration. It has an AUX input
jack, but you still can't use the screen or steering wheel controls
with the iPod.

In <http://db.tidbits.com/article/8939>, Adam Engst wrote:

> There is one simple thing Apple could do to make iPods easier
> to use in cars. When a podcast episode ends, the iPod stops [...]

The iPod interface wasn't designed to be used while driving. Doing
anything more than selecting the next/previous song or adjusting the
volume requires the user to look at the iPod's screen.

There are a couple of products that allow you to use an iPod with
minimal distraction. The Dension IceLink Plus is one of them:
<http://www.dension.com/icelinkplus.php>

In addition to an audio and power link, these products allow you to
control the iPod via the car stereo. They usually work by mimicking a CD
changer: playlists on the iPod are mapped to the CD 1-6 buttons on the
car stereo.
This means the iPod is controlled via hardware buttons with proper
tactile feedback, so you can operate them without looking at them.
Operation also gets simpler: you can select a new playlist with a single
button press.

There are drawbacks, though. Not all functions are available, but
selecting artists by name is not something to do while driving anyway.
Also, these devices are expensive, and you lose your CD changer port.
This has kept me from buying one of these products.

For my car, I settled on a SiK imp:
<http://www.sik.com/imp.php>. It provides power and a line-level audio
link. On my car stereo, which includes a line input, it works much
better than using the headphone output of the iPod.

The one thing missing from this solution is remote control. Even a
simple controller like the Apple Radio Remote would help:
<http://www.ipresents.co.uk/music/2006/01/ipod-fm-radio-remote.html>
Of course, the SiK imp plugs into the dock connector, so I can't hook up
a second device to that bus. I haven't found any splitters for the dock
connector, so if I want to add a remote I'll have to break out the
soldering iron.

In the meantime, it seems to me there's a market for a device like the
SiK imp that offers an audio link (be it line-level or FM), power, plus
a remote control panel that allows you to easily select a new playlist.


Harro de Jong

In <http://db.tidbits.com/article/8939>, Adam Engst wrote:

>There is one simple thing Apple could do to make iPods easier to use
>in cars. When a podcast episode ends, the iPod stops and returns to
>the main menu, forcing the user who wants to listen to the next episode
>to navigate to it manually, which is far more effort than merely pressing
>the Pause button to stop the next one from playing automatically.


It's not only podcasts, when the iPod finishes playing all the files in a particular "section" it pops the UI up to the top level. This behavior has been the one thing that irritates me most about the interface.  I don't understand the benefit. Regardless of whether it makes it easier to use when driving, it makes more sense to display the last section the user navigated to when finishing playing. Why make the user drill back down when 95% of the time they are in the area they want to be in?

Michael

On Apr 10, 2007, at 12:24 PM, Harro de Jong wrote:

> In <http://db.tidbits.com/article/8939>, Adam Engst wrote:
>
>> There is one simple thing Apple could do to make iPods easier
>> to use in cars. When a podcast episode ends, the iPod stops [...]
>
> The iPod interface wasn't designed to be used while driving. Doing
> anything more than selecting the next/previous song or adjusting the
> volume requires the user to look at the iPod's screen.

Given the fact that Apple was heavily touting car-integration, I'm
surprised that they have not come up with a better solution to this
problem. Even when the iPod is properly integrated, things like
track selection still cause considerable distraction (looking at the
stereo head unit vs looking at the iPod itself, which isn't much of a
difference).

IMHO one obvious solution is to build in some sort of screen reader
like functionality, that would read off the menu item as you scroll
through them. (Of course, this would not solve the problem of
selecting among podcast episodes, but should make all other
navigation while driving easier.)

Tomoharu

On 7/4/2007 10:26 AM, "Alexander Hoffman" <ahoffmanaledev.com> spake thus:

> And if the speeding mack truck hits you, you're screwed regardless
> of your means of transportation.

Yes, but on a bicycle (or walking), you're going to hear that Mack truck (or
other vehicle) coming a lot earlier than you would in a car, because a car
is an enclosed and thus somewhat insulated space (unless you have a
convertible or the windows down). It's very hard for vehicles to sneak up on
you when walking or cycling unless you're making an active effort to block
out the rest of the world (by e.g., listening to music). Most of the people
I've seen either walking or cycling with iPods have them so loud that *I*
can hear what they're listening to. Not are they probably damaging their
hearing, they're asking to get run over; especially the lemming students
around my campus who combine iPod listening with not watching where they're
going/what's coming. I've nearly run over a few myself at low speeds while
coming around corners.

Regardless, as Alex says, the real point is that travelling in traffic by
any means while blasting your ears with an iPod is just plain dumb.

--
Nigel Stanger, Dunedin, NEW ZEALAND.
http://xri.net/=nigel.stanger

There is one simple thing Apple could do to make iPods easier to use in cars. When a podcast episode ends, the iPod stops and returns to the main menu, forcing the user who wants to listen to the next episode to navigate to it manually, ... As far as I can tell, the workaround for this is to create and sync to the iPod a smart playlist that selects all the episodes of a particular podcast.

I'm confused about this - all my podcasts play straight through, one after another. (Of course I'm walking or on a bus, so manipulation isn't the same safety hazard!). Is this perhaps a difference in my iPod settings via iTunes? "Podcasts" show up in Playlists on my iPod, not within Music at the top level. (I am primarily listening to NPR podcasts, short clips, although i do have some hour long ones on there as well. And i have an ancient 10G iPod.)



[Your iPod is so old it doesn't know to treat podcasts specially in any way. You win! -Adam]



Another difference between cyclists and pedestrians, with respect to headphone use, is that pedestrians are typically on a sidewalk (away from cars) while cyclists share the road. I can't articulate why, but the idea of wearing headphones while on my bike has always seemed completely wrong (and I felt this way even before I broke my shoulder in a bike crash [avoiding a pedestrian]). I don't know about other pedestrians, but I often turn my iPod up when i go outside, because the road noise makes it hard to hear what's coming through the headphones. (Again, I'm listening to the spoken word, not music.) Once I get through downtown and back to residential streets, i can turn it down again.