Trusting drivers with hi-tech stuff
By: Brent Kreud
Date: 2005-02-24
Twenty five years ago, if you called someone at their office the chances were just about 100% that they would be at their desk.
Imagine! Office desks were like prison shackles that fixed people in place all day long.
Today, information technology has changed all that. Employees could be at their desk, walking down the street, in another office, even on the golf course, and still be working more effectively than they ever were with the desk shackles.
It's a major life change. It's freedom and productivity all at once. People can work on the move. They can take work home with them, or even telecommute, working remotely from their homes.
It's hard for old-style bosses to adapt to all of this. The worst of the old-style bosses are still fixated on time-at-the-desk as evidence of diligence. The best have struck up a new relationship with their employees--one based on trust, motivation, and better ways of measuring productivity.
This is a profound change in human relationships and one we're all still struggling to come to grips with, particularly in the area of automotive telematics.
Telematics is a pretty new word. The dictionary defines it as "the combination of telecommunications and computing." In other words, exchanging data wirelessly between systems and devices.
Auto manufacturers and all kinds of other equipment makers have a marvelous array of telematics technologies they are itching to install in your next automobile. They offer a bonanza of benefits from safety (for example, automatic reporting of collisions) to navigation, stolen vehicle recovery, and hi-speed internet connectivity.
A fly in the ointment of this wonderful vision is the driver. Those in charge of rule-making and safety have a great fear that chaos and mayhem will result from this mobile empowerment. There are grave doubts that drivers can handle all these hi-tech distractions.
They could have a point. Drivers are already distracted by everything from radios, CD players and electronic billboards to passenger conversations and onboard dining. Wireless communications introduce a new level of intrusion.
Mobile phones are a case in point. Since their first commercial use in Toyko in 1979 (and 1982 in North America) their use has exploded from rare to ubiquitous. And public reaction has, to say the least, been mixed. One driver of this writer's acquaintance becomes enraged at the mere sight of another driver using a mobile phone--even while stopped! Some want mobile phone use by drivers banned completely while the vehicle is in motion. There are unlimited stories of drivers misbehaving while on the phone.
Political reaction has been predictable. If the public want a ban give them one, but allow people to still use their phones! The outcome: legislation against use of hand-held phones while driving is becoming common. Hands-free phones are legal just about everywhere.
This kind of legislation flies in the face of research indicating that hands-free phone use is just as distracting as hand-held phone use, but it makes politicians, and the public, feel better.
However, like the old-style bosses mentioned above, we may have to come to grips with the this new dimension of auto mobility. If we don't trust drivers to handle the responsibility of telematics in the automobile we'll snarl this new communications bonanza in a tangle of new rules.
It might, though, take a major educational initiative. Workers away from their desks and the watchful eyes of their bosses need a culture of personal motivation to support their new freedom.
Super-connected drivers are going to need the same, and probably a great deal of education about this new dimension of their task.
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