Michael Chang » Gadgets http://www.michaelchang.com/blog A lighthearted blog on photography, technology, and general musings Thu, 01 Apr 2010 17:39:45 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 GPS Mounting in California http://www.michaelchang.com/blog/gadgets/gps-mounting-in-california/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=gps-mounting-in-california http://www.michaelchang.com/blog/gadgets/gps-mounting-in-california/#comments Sun, 11 Oct 2009 16:44:55 +0000 changm http://www.michaelchang.com/blog/?p=100 Are you driving in California?  If so, the GPS laws have changed, again, this year.  There’s a lot of old material and misinformation circulating around the web, so here’s the definitive source from the California DMV, legalese and all:

http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/d12/vc26708.htm

What does this all mean for California GPS users?

  1. GPS units must be mounted in a 5″-square corner on the lower corner of the driver-side windshield area or in a 7″-square corner on the passenger-side windshield area.
  2. Friction mounts (bean bags and other mount devices) are not allowed if the GPS unit ends up blocking any part of the windshield besides those areas mentioned in #1.  (You can’t mount the GPS unit in the middle of the dash, even if you have a bean bag friction mount.)

That’s about it except for additional fine print.  You may need a lawyer and an engineer to decipher the rest of the small details.  You can’t be watching movies on the GPS unit, for instance. By the way, those rear-view-mirror hanging dice aren’t allowed, either, and you’re supposed to clear all the ice and snow on your windows, too.  Only California and Minnesota have specific GPS-mounting rules.  Go figure…

Related note: one of these days, we’ll have ulta thin, flexible, portable screens that we can tape to just about anything.

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