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warning signs, flashing lights and barricades to follow the
devices’s verbal commands.
Mullins has seen and heard the same from drivers he’s
trained. “They’re so focused on listening to that voice,
they’re not aware of their surroundings. Like there’s
a low bridge coming up, or, wait a minute, this is a
neighborhood, what’s a truck doing in a neighborhood?
‘But the GPS says go this way.’ What about those big signs
that say, ‘no trucks’?”
Researchers have shown that the saying, “it isn’t the
destination, it’s the journey that matters” takes on new
meaning when it comes to GPS use and its effect on
drivers. There are definite use-it-or-lose-it consequences
from overreliance on the devices.
In 2016, a study at University College London
compared brain activity between drivers given turn-byturn
instructions from a GPS and drivers using their own
senses. The study found that when drivers used their own
senses, there was a spike in activity in the hippocampus,
the part of the brain responsible for navigation, and in
the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for
planning. The spikes occurred literally at every turn and
were more pronounced when the driver had more than
two options.
No such increase in brain activity was recorded in
the drivers who simply followed GPS directions. And
when these drivers were suddenly cut off from GPS
instructions, their brains had not adequately monitored
their progress and they were unable to immediately take
over navigating.
Other studies have indicated that the more people
depend on technology to lead them around, the less they
retain their natural ability to navigate on their own, much
the way muscles weaken from lack of exercise.
In a Japanese study done in 2008, scientists took three
groups of drivers along a route, using either maps, GPS
or no directional aid at all, then asked them to repeat
the route on their own. The drivers who’d used GPS on
GPS devices are a helpful navigational tool. But when
people become so dependent on them that they blindly
follow the machine’s instructions over what their own
experience tells them and what’s right before their eyes,
it can lead to big problems.
the first run were not only outperformed by those who’d
used a map, but by those who used memory alone.
A 2006 study of London cab drivers who’d navigated
that city’s complicated streets for years found these
drivers had above-average development in the area of
the brain that processes spatial representation. The study
also suggested that this pumped-up part of the brain
starts to diminish once the drivers retire.
Roadmap to proficiency
Researchers have found that one of the key problems
with GPS is its focus on an A-to-B route. The driver’s task
is reduced to doing what the voice tells him to do. Even
the map on many GPS units will rotate in the direction
the vehicle is going so there isn’t the directional northsouth-east-west
consistency of a paper map. At this level
of disengagement, the driver’s mind is prevented from
developing what is called a cognitive map, a combination of
instinct and intellect that humans normally use to find their
way around.
In the automotive age, cognitive mapping traditionally
begins with studying an actual map, plotting out a route,
noting the towns you’ll pass through, the natural and
manmade landmarks you’ll encounter. Then, memory, vision
and other cognitive functions all come into
play while driving — reading the road signs,
noting the landscape, creating your own
mental landmarks — in the formation of the
cognitive maps we create in our minds.
Mullins’ advice to younger, beginning
drivers is to take the time to learn how to use
a map and an atlas along with your GPS.
At CalArk, Stout said, it’s mandatory.
“Education from the very beginning of
employment is key. We do not offer GPS
systems in our units, but even if we do at
some point, map reading will still need to be
a skill all of our drivers have,” she said.
At some point, that GPS will make a
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