Opinion

Having filled our homes with audio technology, manufacturers want to do the same to our motor vehicles. But, asks Barry Fox, is being ‘lost in the moment’ while at the wheel a good idea?

When an electronics company was launching a new satnav device at the Royal Automobile Club (RAC) in London a few years ago, it hired the original ‘Stig’ test driver from BBC’s Top Gear programme to give a talk. When the Stig had finished promoting the satnav, he shared his views on in-car audio.

‘I never listen’, he said. ‘It distracts from driving. All driving is potentially dangerous and needs the driver’s full attention.’ Or as the driving examiner said when he failed a young man I knew: ‘A car is a lethal weapon and you are not yet ready to be put in control of one’.

Immersion on-the-move

The audio industry now sees in-car entertainment as the easiest way to sell expensive equipment to people whose homes are already fully equipped.

The car becomes a surround sound cocoon. LG recently promised an ‘In-Vehicle Entertainment Solution’ that ‘recognises scenery outside the vehicle [and] displays photos linked to past memories associated with that location on the window display’. This, says the Korean company, provides entertainment that ‘turns miles into moments’.

Harman, now owned by LG’s rival Samsung, has similarly grand aims for in-car entertainment, claiming its audio technology and software ‘deliver striking sound you surrender to… A listening experience so mesmerising, you become lost in the moment’.

Surround sound innovator Dolby is also involved, with its Dolby Atmos technology said to put in-car listeners into a ‘spatial sound experience that draws you in deeper, so you hear more and feel more’. Around 150 car models now come with Dolby Atmos immersion.

During the last annual Audio Collaborative conference organised by market analyst Futuresource, the ‘Uninterrupted Immersion: Audio in the Car’ panel session looked at in-car audio’s next big new thing – all-enveloping surround sound with follow-me-around content. A mobile phone acts as the entertainment source and conduit. It picks up in the car where it left off in the living room.

Here’s the thing. No one on the Uninterrupted Immersion panel seriously mentioned road safety. Neither does the UK government’s new Road Safety Strategy, available to read online, make much mention of in-car entertainment.

So I’ll say it: these new audio cocoons are made of steel, weigh a ton and can legally bomb down a motorway at 70mph with other drivers unexpectedly switching lanes and undertaking.

World of difference

Surely this is not a good time to be engrossed in all-enveloping music, breaking news, podcast intrigue or radio drama? As the Stig said, they all sap concentration from the road. And there is a world of difference between sitting in a bass-throbbing, stationary car as part of a consumer electronics show demonstration, and being behind the wheel at a spaghetti junction surrounded by impatient commuters.

I now listen to music in-car mainly in traffic jams and free-flowing open roads. I keep the volume down, with front stereo only so that I can hear any warning horns or motorcycle pipes. Perhaps I am being an old and boring spoilsport. What do other hi-fi-aware drivers think?