Australian state bans driving with phone GPS

Mike Bantick
Tuesday, 22 September 2009 08:47

Your IT - Entertainment

Using your iPhone, or other GPS enabled smartphone to navigate whilst driving has become illegal in at least one Australian state.  Police say, that using a mobile phone when driving, regardless of the active application is not on.

With the built in Google Maps application the iPhone has replaced the street directory in many vehicles.  With the iPhone 3GS hitting the market, sporting a built in compass and accompanied by new navigation apps from the likes of TomTom and Navigon, the Apple (and many other brands as well) smartphone can become a surrogate portable sat-nav system.

But authorities in Australia, in particular the state of Victoria have decided a clamp-down is required.

The Victorian Government road traffic authority VicRoads will introduce a new amendment to the road rules beginning November 9th.  From then it will be illegal for drives to navigate using a device that can be used as a phone and a satellite navigation system.

"A phone will only be allowed to be used for its primary purpose," a VicRoads spokeswoman said in a telephone interview with The Age newspaper. "If it's a phone, it's a phone.”

It seems that increasingly as drivers get nabbed by police for using their mobile devices, the excuse that the device was being used as a GPS is becoming commonplace.  New South Wales has already stated the practice is an offence in Australia's most populace state.

Too bad if you just outlaid AU$99.99 for your new Navigon or TomTom app for this very purpose.

It is not clear that even mounting the smartphone in a hands free cradle, as traditional portable sat-nav devices can be done, will not be enough to ‘get around’ the new law.   Because the primary function of the device is a phone, it is illegal to operate it when in control of a vehicle.  [UPDATE] Unlike the New South Wales law, use of a cradle may well be a legal way around the new rule. 

Using a mobile phone to make or receive a phone call while driving is prohibited except if the phone:

• is secured in a commercially designed holder fixed to the vehicle,
  or
• can be operated by the driver without touching any part of the phone.

All other functions (including video calls, texting and emailing) are prohibited.

This news also arrives only a couple of weeks after Apple turned on the Show Traffic feature of the in-built Google Maps iPhone application.  An app designed for drivers to use the traffic congestion detection feature as a driving aid.