Roles and methods of digital map data usage for motor vehicle navigation systems

There is a concern: "Is it safe to display a navigational map in front of a car driver while driving? Should a route guidance feature be restricted to a voice/arrow assisted turn-by-turn method for the safety of a driver?" This investigation is designed in an attempt to discover statistical and quantitative degree of safety to the driver with respect to the time required to read the displayed map, find the current car location, and determine the relative heading-orientation in six different map display methods: (1) head-up mode (i.e., fully rotatable and scrollable map display with a car location cursor fixed about the center of the displayed map), (2) 90°-rotatable (i.e., north-up/south-up/west-up/east-up switchable and scrollable map display with a car location cursor fixed about the center of the displayed map), (3) scrollable map display in north-up/south-up switchable mode with a car location cursor fixed about the center of the displayed map, fill scrollable map display in north-up mode with a car location cursor fixed about the center of the displayed map, (5) page-by-page stationary map display in north-up/south-up switchable mode with a car location cursor roaming around, and (6) page-by-page stationary map display in north-up mode with a car location cursor roaming around. The results are compared with the length of time taken by drivers to operate on the car radio and cassette tape player to discuss how safe (or dangerous) it might be to watch the map during driving relative to operating on commonly available vehicle equipment.