A New Direction
The Sunday Age
Sunday July 19, 1998
WE'RE DRIVING along the South Gippsland Highway, approaching the corkscrew runoff on to the freeway to Melbourne, when a woman's voice interrupts the music on the stereo system: "Left turn ahead."
It is dark and raining heavily and the cars ahead are a mess of dazzling head and tail-lights darting every whichway like ants on an anthill.
A hook-turn symbol appears on the TV monitor on the dashboard of our BMW 750iL and the voice cuts in again: "Left turn in 200 metres." We move to the left lane and the voice instructs: "Take the second turn to the left."
We dutifully obey and soon we are sweeping down the on-ramp to join the next herd of traffic, city-bound on the South Gippsland Freeway.
Driving a car equipped with GPS satellite navigation is a bit like having an invisible woman, with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the city and suburbs, sitting beside you.
"Keep to the right ... stay on the main road ... take the second turn to the right on to the motorway ... your destination is ahead ..." And when you get to your street, it announces: "You have arrived", while the sat-nav onboard monitor shows a little arrow with a ball on top.
The BMW satellite-navigation system, which combines voice instruction, street maps and directions on the inbuilt monitor, will take you, literally, anywhere you want to go.
Stopping to study the street directory is no longer necessary. All you do is plot in your destination - city, suburb and street - on the dashboard monitor and the navigation system does the rest.
It uses the satellite-based Global Positioning System in conjunction with UBD directory digital maps, which are loaded on a CD-ROM device installed in the boot as part of the car's audio system.
The system gets signals from up to six of the 24 NavStar navigation satellites orbiting the earth. In one corner of the monitor, tiny white dots indicate how many satellites are providing information.
Last October, BMW became the first automotive company in Australia to introduce a full navigation guidance system that could be used in urban areas.
Melbourne was the first city in Australia to get satellite navigation and this has now been extended to Sydney and Canberra, and from next week mapping will include Brisbane, the Sunshine and Gold coasts and the main highways in between.
When other areas are included - Perth and Adelaide are due early next year - sat-nav users are given a replacement CD.
The mapped areas around Melbourne extend to Whittlesea to the north, Healesville and Pakenham to the east, the whole of the Mornington Peninsula, and in the west to Bacchus Marsh and Werribee.
Provincial cities such as Ballarat and Bendigo will be added later. Eventually, mapping of the whole country will fit on one CD, negating the need for road maps.
The system comes standard in the big $263,000 BMW 750iL but costs $3750 to fit in the 540i Executive, 735iL and 740iL, the three models with onboard monitors.
Other car makers, such as Holden, are working on their own systems. Daimler-Benz, in Europe, has announced what it calls DynAPs (Dynamic Auto Pilot System), a system that guides drivers past trouble spots and traffic jams with the help of updated traffic information.
The new Alfa Romeo, just released here, also boasts satellite navigation for about $3000, but the monitor is quite small and the system can't be used until BMW's exclusive rights to sat-nav expires at the end of October.
The BMW system provides onboard directions while you are within the mapped area, but you are being tracked by the satellite all the time, no matter where you are.
What we found interesting was this: we were at Foster, near Wilson's Promontory, and plotted in Fitzroy Street, St Kilda. Immediately, the monitor told us we were 132 kilometres away and the small arrow in the top right-hand corner pointed there, while the onboard computer estimated our time of arrival (which we found to be spot-on).
The system can be handy in lots of places. At Leongatha, for instance, there's a dogleg junction in the middle of town: one road leads to Melbourne, the other on to Morwell. You are left in little doubt which turn to take: the arrow switches direction and points back towards Melbourne.
Another interesting function: using the map grid, you can pinpoint a particular restaurant or theatre (if you know roughly where they are), or simply key in "airport", and the sat-nav will take you right there.
But the system is not perfect. One night, we asked it to take us from The Age building in Spencer Street to Fitzroy Street, St Kilda. It told us to turn left at Bourke Street (presumably to take us down Kings Way). When we ignored the instruction, it replotted immediately but then tried to turn us into Flinders Lane (a one-way street).
Another time, we were in St Kilda and wanted to go to Ingles Street, Port Melbourne. In Canterbury Road, Middle Park, it instructed us to turn left into Dundas Place (you can't turn left there). When we ignored the turn, it replotted and turned us into Dorcas Street, then told us: "your destination is ahead" (Dorcas Street runs into Ingles Street).
You can be guided to towns outside the mapped area. It wouldn't accept Kinglake, so we plotted Hurstbridge. It took us out Upper Heidelberg Road, on to the Greensborough bypass, then warned us to keep right as we approached the turn-off to Whittlesea.
Out in the western suburbs, the nat-sat system seemed a little confused. It was unaware that Heaths Road went right through to Wyndham Vale, an outer Werribee suburb still in the mapped zone. It continually tried to turn us left off Heaths Road. When you ignore the instructions, the voice becomes insistent. "Turn left, turn left." Or, it says, "Do a U-turn if possible, then take the next turn to the right."
But it eventually took us to Ribblesdale Avenue, where we had asked it to go. On the return journey, though, it turned us right - straight into Wyndham Vale reserve.
The monitor shows you what street you are in, how many metres to the next turn-off, and an arrow showing you when to turn.
If you are caught up in heavy traffic, you can press "alternative route" and it will immediately plot another route around the traffic ahead.
But you can't please everybody. We took a male friend to demonstrate the abilities of our new onboard guide. "Aaaah no," he cried, jokingly. "Can't you change that (the voice). I can't stand a woman backseat driving."
I said, take me to Manly, and it did.
ANDRE VAN STIPHOUT was one of the first car owners in Australia to have satellite navigation installed in his BMW 540i. Now he wouldn't be without it.
Van Stiphout, who runs a steel fabrication business in Mordialloc, spends "the best part of a half a day at least four days a week" visiting clients or driving to construction sites. Until recently, he had to spend a lot of time poring over a Melways street directory.
He bought the BMW in February last year and had navigation installed at a cost of $5000 as soon as it was available last October (factory-fitted, it costs $3500). He hasn't used his Melways since. "It's sitting in the boot," he says.
Now, he just "punches in the suburb and the street name and, basically, let it do the rest".
"You can have either the arrow display or the UBD map." (The arrow display points to roundabouts and street corners and gives you the name of the street you are in and the one you are to turn into, as well as the distance from it. The UBD map can be enlarged, but is harder to read.)
"I don't even have to look at the thing (the monitor). I just have to listen, so you are not distracted by it at all. You sort of look at it when you pull up at the lights," van Stiphout says.
"Once you have loaded your information in, it gives you plenty of warning (about where to turn).
"There are a couple of little hiccups with it, but I haven't found that much of a problem. For instance, at Camberwell Junction, it asks you to turn right, which we all know you can't do."
He finds the satellite system invaluable in the work he does. "At times, you are trying to find a street you haven't heard of before. I just punch in the address and it does the rest. It is really James Bond stuff - and it is very accurate, too. Accurate up to about five metres. Obviously, the satellites are realling honing in on where you are."
Van Stiphout also found the system worked well on a trip to Sydney last Easter. "We left on the Tuesday afternoon before Easter. Sitting in the driveway before we left, I just punched in Raglan Street, Manly, which is where our hotel was, and on Wednesday afternoon, we arrived there (after an Albury stopover).
"It just continued to plot our way to Sydney. It took us straight to Manly, over overpasses and freeways and God knows what. Normally, it (finding his way around Sydney's traffic) would have driven me nuts."
At one point before he got there, he wasn't listening and took a wrong turn off the freeway. "Within seconds, it had started to recalculate and get me back on to the freeway. "
And, yes, he does look at that little arrow in the top right-hand corner that points you in the right direction.
"It really is a little compass. It gives you a basic idea of where you are." -- Kevin Norbury
© 1998 The Sunday Age
