When Driving With GPS is Against the Law

As reported by Consumer Reports: We love our GPS navigation devices, if only because they spare us from begging for directions from clueless strangers. And whether we get our GPS data from a stand-alone personal navigation device or a smart phone, we can rest assured that they are legal in all 50 states, unlike, say, radar detectors.  

Well, not always. GPS devices are covered under distracted-driving laws. Whether you’re in compliance depends on how you use them, even how you install them. And failing to follow the rules is not only expensive in terms of tickets, points against your license, and higher insurance premiums, it can also be dangerous.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 421,000 people were injured in motor vehicle crashes involving a distracted driver in 2012 (those are the latest figures available) and 3,328 of them died. Those figures include many forms of driving distractions, including texting, grooming, and fiddling with the in-dash radio. And, yes, GPS apps were involved in some of those crashes.

Jerry Levine, a New York City-based attorney specializing in traffic-violation cases, says the growing popularity of smart phones has kept him busy. “A lot of people think it’s okay to hold an iPhone in your hands and use it in GPS or speakerphone mode,” he said. “That’s not only illegal, but a good way to get injured or killed.”

Even if you escape injury while doing that, you are risking a substantial amount in fines and other penalties. For example, in New York State, improper use of a cell phone while driving can slap 5 points on your license, which not only carries penalties of its own, but can also help propel you into a new category of penalties, New York’s Driver Responsibility Assessment, a fee that can be as high as $750 to be paid off in three years.  In New York, your license to drive goes bye-bye when you accrue 11 points.

Wherever you live, here's what you can do to avoid trouble.

Go hands-off

While law specifics vary from state to state, one situation is always illegal: holding an electronic device, including a phone, while operating a motor vehicle.

“The way the laws are written,” Levine said, “if you’re holding an electronic device in a prominent manner, there’s a presumption that you’re using it.” But cops don’t have to see the device. Sometimes all it takes is for them to see that you don’t have both hands on the wheel.

If you need to make a call, send a text, or program your GPS, do it before you leave, or pull into a safe place on the side of the road.  Some states, such as New York, do make allowances for medical and other 911 emergencies.

Being pulled over can open another can of worms. The police will have the right to check for other violations, such as not wearing safety belts and driving with expired insurance cards.

Mount your device properly

According to GPStracklog, a site devoted to the care and feeding of GPS enthusiasts, mounting your phone or PND on a windshield—including using the mount made for your device—is illegal in 28 states.

And even where windshield mounts are legal, some states are quite particular about where on the windshield they can go. For instance, in California and Hawaii, you can windshield-mount a GPS device within a 5-inch section on the driver’s side, or a 7-inch section on the passenger side. California adds the proviso that the installation not interfere with air bags. Some states are a bit vaguer than that. Minnesota statutes 169.70 and 169.72, for instance, stipulate that: “A person shall not drive or operate any motor vehicle with global positioning systems or navigation systems when mounted or located near the bottom-most portion of the windshield.”

If state laws ruin your plans for a windshield mount, don’t worry, you’ve still got plenty of OEM and aftermarket options. Most manufacturers include a plastic disk that sticks to the dashboard to give you an alternative mounting location. Another option is a bean bag mount, which simply sits on the dashboard and has a rubberized surface to hold it in place.

Choose the right device

Smart phones give you multiple options for GPS navigation apps, complete with traffic views, alternate-route suggestions, and other features to ensure a smooth trip. And their large, often-bright displays make them easy read on a sun-drenched dashboard. But phone apps use up precious data from your monthly plan to update the maps, and they may lose their way during phone calls or when you drop your cellular signal.

Heavy GPS users may want to consider a stand-alone device for GPS navigation, such as one of the recommended models from our recently updated Ratings. Most come with free lifetime map updates and traffic reporting, though the traffic data they display is often not as current or as detailed as the data you get on cell phones. Look for models with displays of at least 4.3 inches. The larger the screen, the easier it will be to see street names and other map details. Larger displays also mean that buttons and keyboards are more convenient to use when you are entering addresses.

Lyft Announces its Own CarPool Feature, One Day After Uber

As reported by GigaOM: For those of you wondering why Uber broke the news of its new carpooling feature after 8 pm ET last night, we now have a potential answer. It looks like Uber may have been trying to beat its pink mustachioed rival — Lyft — to the punch.

This morning Lyft announced its own version of carpooling: Lyft Line. Passengers going the same direction can request “Line” within the app, the same way they might request a regular Lyft or a Lyft Plus. The app will match people who are requesting pick up in the same neighborhood, and the Lyft driver will swing around to get everyone.

The interface of the Lyft app, with the added carpool option under the “Line” tab
Just like with Uber’s proposed “UberPool,” this is likely to be a slower car ordering option than regular Lyft, but it will slash the costs. The app will automatically deduct a discount that’s 10-60 percent less than the ride would normally be otherwise, so passengers don’t need to haggle among themselves to figure out a fair split.

“Even if a match isn't made, passengers will still get a ride as requested, and will pay the fixed discounted price shown when they first requested the ride,” said a Lyft spokeswoman. “This will feel like an original Lyft ride at a more affordable price.” UberPool will also offer customers a discount, regardless of whether they find a carpooling match.

The similarities between Lyft Line and UberPool are so striking that it’s likely information was leaked between the two competitors. Uber may have been the first to make its new feature announcement, but Lyft is more prepared to actually roll it out. The company had a polished commercial to accompany the blog post and is launching the feature to all iOS users in San Francisco starting today, whereas Uber is testing UberPool with a beta group before slowly rolling it out to more people starting August 15th.

Either way, as with all of the price wars and product competition happening in ridesharing, the consumer ultimately benefits. Lyft Line and UberPool cut ridesharing costs even more, which will in turn widen the audience of people who can afford to use them.

As I mentioned yesterday, it was strange to see Uber roll out a carpooling option before Lyft, given that the initial premise of Lyft’s company was carpooling. Back in the day, co-founders John Zimmer and Logan Green launched a company called Zimride that matched people traveling long distances for rides, with the added benefit of energy conservation and community building. Zimride pivoted into Lyft — a not-particularly-energy-efficient alternative — when the Lyft side experiment took off with users.

It appears the company never forgot its original mission.

Why Billionaires Salivate Over the U.S. Wireless Market

As reported by Bloomberg News: T-Mobile US Inc. is becoming billionaire bait even though it’s the smallest national competitor in a market where the vast majority of the population already has a mobile phone.

What’s luring France’s Xavier Niel and Japan’s Masayoshi Son to bid on T-Mobile is a chance to get into the $195 billion U.S. industry before a new surge in demand for data services such as Internet accessand video streaming. It’s the same rationale Verizon Communications Inc. used to justify its $130 billion deal to acquire full control of Verizon Wireless earlier this year. Data sales are already climbing 18 percent this year, according to analyst Chetan Sharma.

The bet is that wireless data will move beyond phones and tablets to a number of other devices, from cars to smartwatches to thermostats -- all requiring a way to connect to the Internet for updates and monitoring. If that vision comes true, there could be a gold mine in owning one of the few networks capable of handling that demand in the gadget-hungry U.S., where people have proved willing to pay steadily for wireless service even as spending drops elsewhere.

“Subscribers are adding more devices to their plan. And that’s going to drive more data usage, and data usage will drive more growth,” said Colby Synesael, an analyst at Cowen & Co. “The market is attractive, and I think that might spur people into action.”

Risks are plentiful in the U.S. market, too. Regulators are proving resistant to the idea of mergers. Price competition is growing fiercer. Investing in a large country with wide, sparsely populated areas is expensive. And demand could fail to materialize for the services the carriers expect to provide. For every company investing more in the market, there’s one seeking to exit -- T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom AG and former Verizon Wireless partner Vodafone Group Plc.

Discretionary Income
Still, there are few places like the U.S. for a wager on wireless data growth. Investment in faster 4G download speeds has outpaced Europe. Developing markets like China and Latin America don’t have the same discretionary income for mass adoption of new gadgets and the services that go with them.

“The United States has one of the strongest economies in the world, a good competitive framework for wireless, and still has lower penetration rates compared with other parts of the world,” Verizon Chief Executive Officer Lowell McAdam said last year, explaining the rationale for its wireless deal. “We are just getting started in machine-to-machine, and connected devices.”

With its deal, New York-based Verizon got full control of the largest U.S. mobile-phone provider. Son, the chairman of Tokyo-based SoftBank Corp. (9984), took on a riskier asset, acquiring struggling Sprint Corp. in a $21.6 billion transaction last year. Now he’s said to be seeking to put together a bid for Bellevue, Washington-based T-Mobile as well.

Iliad’s Bid
That plan could be foiled by Niel, whose French wireless provider, Iliad SA, approached T-Mobile’s board with a $33-a-share bid for control of the company. Deutsche Telekom, which owns two-thirds of T-Mobile, considered the offer less competitive than the proposal of about $40 a share that Son is said to be preparing, according to people familiar with the matter.

Then there’s another billionaire: Dish Network Corp. (DISH) Chairman Charlie Ergen, who has said he could go after T-Mobile if Sprint fails to buy it.

U.S. regulators may prefer a buyer like Iliad or Dish that would preserve a market with four national carriers, since Son would seek to combine T-Mobile and Sprint into a single company. Son has argued that a merger would help him gain the capital he needs to invest in the faster wireless Internet speeds that consumers crave.

Important Infrastructure
“The mobile Internet is the most important infrastructure for the 21st century,” Son told Charlie Rose in an interview earlier this year. “I would like to provide U.S. citizens the world’s No. 1 network.”

With his SoftBank already among Japan’s largest wireless carriers, Son is straddling two of the regions that are expected to dominate the mobile Internet. Cisco Systems Inc. forecasts that global data traffic over wireless networks will climb at a 61 percent annual clip to 15.9 trillion megabytes in 2018 -- the equivalent of about 4 trillion high-definition movies. North America and Asia will represent two-thirds of that traffic.

And while Asia will have the biggest share of traffic because of its larger population, North America will have a bigger share of advanced gadgets that require ever-faster download and upload speeds -- which let wireless carriers charge more. In North America, 93 percent of mobile devices and connections will be “smart” -- with advanced computing and multimedia capabilities -- by 2018, compared with 47 percent in Asia, Cisco said.

‘Jaw-Dropping’ Divergence
Americans have kept on paying a steady rate for wireless services as speeds get faster and new features like video are added to their plans. U.S. carriers got an average of $48.17 a month in revenue per user in the fourth quarter, compared with $32.51 in France, according to researcher Informa Plc.

Wireless revenue per capita rose 17 percent in the U.S. from the beginning of 2009 through the middle of 2013, compared with a 4 percent decline for the rest of the developed world, according to MoffettNathanson LLC.

“We have witnessed a jaw-dropping 21 percent divergence between the U.S. and the rest of the world in just four short years,” analyst Craig Moffett wrote in a January report. “The U.S. wireless market has steadily grown, first on the back of wireless voice and now, more recently, on the back of wireless data.”

Then there are the devices that don’t even require humans to connect to the network -- vehicle tracking systems and cars reporting maintenance problems to the dealership, medical monitoring devices, home-security and climate-control systems. Those industries are increasingly connecting their devices to wireless networks to create the “Internet of Things,” a market that will grow 17.5 percent a year worldwide from 2013 to 2020, according to researcher IDC. Developed markets like the U.S. will make up about 90 percent of these types of connections, IDC said.

‘1,200 Percent’

That means the old way of measuring the maturity of a market, known as penetration, is increasingly irrelevant. When mobile phones were still a new technology, a market penetration of 50 percent meant that half of the population still didn't have a phone, leaving plenty of room for growth. Now, with tablets also connected to the network, many countries have more connected devices than they do people, leading to penetration rates above 100 percent. The U.S. rate was 104 percent at the end of last year, according to CTIA, the wireless industry group.

Investors in U.S. wireless networks are betting that penetration can expand to many times the population.

“In 2008 when we rolled out the open network, we talked about penetration rates of 400 percent and 500 percent -- I have to admit we were wrong,” Verizon’s McAdam said in March. “It probably ought to be 1,000 percent or 1,200 percent when you look at the Internet of Things.”

The World's Most Hackable Cars

As reported by Dark Reading: If you drive a 2014 Jeep Cherokee, a 2014 Infiniti Q50, or a 2015 Escalade, your car not only has state-of-the-art network-connected functions and automated features, but it's also the most likely to get hacked.

That's what renowned researchers Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek concluded in their newest study of vulnerabilities in modern automobiles, which they will present Wednesday at Black Hat USA in Las Vegas. The researchers focused on the potential for remote attacks, where a nefarious hacker could access the car's network from afar -- breaking into its wireless-enabled radio, for instance, and issuing commands to the car's steering or other automated driving feature.

The researchers studied in-depth the automated and networked functionality in modern vehicle models, analyzing how an attacker could potentially access a car's Bluetooth, telematics, or on-board phone app, for example, and using that access to then control the car's physical features, such as automated parking, steering, and braking. Some attacks would require the attacker to be within a few meters of the targeted car, but telematics-borne attacks could occur from much farther away, the researchers say.

Not surprisingly, the vehicles with fewer computerized and networked functions were less likely to get attacked by a hacker. "The most hackable cars had the most [computerized] features and were all on the same network and could all talk to each other," says Miller, who is a security engineer at Twitter. "The least hackable ones had [fewer] features, and [the features] were segmented, so the radio couldn't talk to the brakes," for example.

The 2014 Infiniti Q50 would be the easiest of all to hack because its telematics, Bluetooth, and radio functions all run on the same network as the car's engine and braking systems, for instance, making it easier for an attacker to gain control of the car's computerized physical operations.

Different vehicles had different network configurations: Some had Bluetooth on a separate network than the steering and acceleration systems.

The researchers say the 2014 Dodge Viper, the 2014 Audi A8, and the 2014 Honda Accord are the least hackable vehicles. They ranked the Audi A8 as the least hackable overall because its network-accessible potential attack surfaces are separated from the car's physical components such as steering, notes Miller. "Each feature of the car is separated on a different network and connected by a gateway," he says. "The wirelessly connected computers are on a separate network than the steering, which makes us believe that this car is harder to hack to gain control over" its features.

By contrast, the 2014 Jeep Cherokee runs the "cyber physical" features and remote access functions on the same network, Valasek notes. "We can't say for sure we can hack the Jeep and not the Audi, but… the radio can always talk to the brakes," and in the Jeep Cherokee, those two are on the same network, he says.

Worries over the cyber security of cars is gaining traction ever since Miller and Valasek's 2013 DEF CON car-hacking research, where the pair demonstrated how they were able to hack and take control of the electronic smart steering, braking, acceleration, engine, and other functions of a 2010 Toyota Prius and 2010 Ford Escape. That research focused on what a bad guy could do if he could get inside the car's internal network, and the researchers physically test-drove the hacks they discovered.

While the pair didn't get much response from Ford and Toyota after providing the carmakers with detailed documentation of their findings, the automobile industry meanwhile appears to be waking up to the potential cyber risks to cars: The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers and the Association of Global Automakers last month announced plans to address growing concerns over security weaknesses and vulnerabilities in new and evolving vehicle automation and networking features. The industry is now forming a voluntary mechanism for sharing intelligence on security threats and vulnerabilities in car electronics and in-vehicle data networks -- likely via an Auto-ISAC (Information Sharing and Analysis Center).

IPS "under the hood"

Meantime, there are ways to potentially lock down these advanced features in today's modern vehicles. Miller and Valasek have built a prototype device that detects and stops a cyber attack. They describe it as a sort of intrusion prevention system (IPS) inside a car that would detect that an attacker that had broken into the car's networked radio, and stop him from sending the braking system a message to lock up, for example.

"It's a device you could plug into the car to stop any of the attacks we've done and that others have done," says Valasek, who is director of security intelligence for IOActive.

The researchers in their Black Hat presentation will show video clips of the prototype and how it can stop an attacker. The device basically plugs into a vehicle's diagnostic port.

"It's mostly about an algorithm that detects attacks and prevents them," Miller says. "You could put it under the hood."

Miller and Valasek say their work studying security weaknesses in vehicles is an attempt to get ahead of the threat: The risk of your car getting hacked today is relatively low. And it doesn't mean you shouldn't buy a car loaded with technology, they say. "This is really an opportunistic attack," Valasek says. "It takes a lot of time, effort, dedication, and money to figure out how to perform one of these attacks and to succeed doing it. Joe Consumer doesn't have to worry, but if you're a high-profile person with a lot of technology in your vehicle, it's something to consider."

They say they are conducting this research now ahead of the game and before it gets easier for attackers to exploit these car network and automation features -- a window that they think could close in the next five years.

The researchers -- who at Black Hat will provide more details of their findings and release their paper on them -- have provided carmakers the report. They're hoping the car companies will take the threat seriously and offer ways to lock down weaknesses and vulnerabilities as well as technology to detect and deflect an attack.

Hacking the Mercedes S Class Active Lane Assist with a Soda Can

As reported by Road and Track: This is, without a doubt, a really stupid thing to actually try. So don't. It is also, without a doubt, awesome to see it in action. It proves what we knew all along: Active Lane Assist is basically a hands-off autonomous cruise system if you disable the safety timeout. So watch, be amazed, but don't be stupid enough to try it yourself:

Normally, ALA requires you to put a hand on the wheel after a certain amount of time, otherwise the system disengages. And it only works when lane markings are clear and conditions are clear enough for the sensors to see the road. But apparently ALA can't distinguish between a human hand and a bottle of soda duct-taped to the wheel, which is both awesome and troubling.

Seriously, don't be stupid and try this. But if you've driven a Mercedes-Benz with Active Lane Assist, you already have an inkling that it was capable of this. Seeing it in action shows how close we are to a hands-free commute—not in some far-off Google Car future, but right now. Incredible.

The Seventh Next Gen GPS Satellite Is Now In Orbit

An Atlas V rocket successfully carried an Air Force GPS satellite into orbit. (Credit: ULA)

As reported by Forbes: On August 1, a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket successfully launched an Air Force GPS-IIF satellite in the orbit. This is the seventh GPS-IIF satellite launched into orbit of a planned constellation of 12 satellites. This satellite is the third launched in 2014, with one more launch planned for later this year.

The GPS-IIF satellites, which are built by Boeing , are intended to replace the GPS-IIA satellites, which were launched in the 1990s. Operating in medium-Earth orbit, these next-generation GPS satellites include improved atomic clocks for more accurate readings. They also add a third civil signal to the GPS system, the L5, which is geared towards providing information for aircraft travel. L5 began broadcasting in April of 2014.

This successful launch marks the second launch in just four days for United Launch Alliance, which placed three Air Force satellites into orbit earlier in the week. That’s the third time this year that ULA has launched two missions in just one week.

The Atlas V rocket successfully launched at 11:23pm EDT on August 1, and carried the GPS satellite to an orbit 11,000 miles above the Earth’s surface. Over the next several weeks, the Air Force will work to verify that the satellite is fully operational before placing it into service in the GPS system.

The ULA’s next launch is on August 13, where it will put Digitalglobe’s Worldview-3 satellite into orbit.

You can watch a video of the successful launch below: