GPS’s May Be a Godsend for Most, But the Technology Actually Poses a Danger to Elders

My dad is observant, calm, collected, and decisive behind the wheel. He never exceeds the speed limit by more than a couple miles, he’s never involved in traffic accidents, and he never gets tickets. He truly is a model driver—except for when he doesn’t know where he’s going. Back in the old days (as he calls them), you would use a real, tangible map to get from place to place or print directions online. But in the present day, navigation systems and GPS’s get you where you need to go. Most are thankful for this innovative technology that is designed to make travelling easier and safer. But for people like my dad, these navigating systems might be making driving more dangerous, a new study finds.

Multitasking can be difficult, especially in higher pressure situations such as driving a car, which is exactly why voice-automated navigation systems were invented. However, this technology still demands some attention and requires a driver to multitask on some degree. “We therefore have to investigate what the different tasks are, and how voice control needs to be designed so as not to increase the risk of accidents, even for older drivers,” says Vera Demberg, one of the researchers behind this study and a professor of computer science and computational linguistics at Saarland University.

In order to understand how seniors process and respond to language commands in the car, Demberg and her team analyzed two different groups: one of which consisted of 36 seniors, with an average age of 72 years, and the second consisting of 34 people, with an average age of 23. Each participant from both groups was tasked with listening to tricky as well as simple statements and then determining whether they made sense or not—all whilst driving along a street in a driving simulator.

This experiment revealed that “younger participants showed stable behavior with both simple and more complex statements,” according to the authors of the study. However, “seniors directed their full attention to resolving the linguistic inconsistencies and neglected the control of the vehicle.” So younger individuals may effectively multitask behind the wheel, but that’s not the case for elders, especially those with low cognitive control.

Now, I’m no scientist, but this correlates exactly with my own experiences. Anytime my dad’s going somewhere new—say, a new restaurant or new city—he opens his laptop, maps out the route, and then tries to memorize it. And sometimes he’ll still print the directions. I remind him that our phones now have the power to get us there quicker, easier, more efficiently and without all that hassle. But he refuses to utilize and rely on the navigation technology. This is because he can’t always decipher which way the nav. told him to turn or how many miles he has left on a road. He ends up placing all of his concentration on listening to and understanding the GPS, which in turn puts him at a greater risk for getting into an accident or even just missing his exit.

I don’t know what I would do without the Maps app on my iPhone; I certainly wouldn’t be able to get from one city to another or even find some local locations. So for modern-day navigation technology, I am thankful—but I no longer recommend it to my dad or any other older folk, as it’s a lot more trouble for them than it’s worth.

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