Could network neutrality stand in the way of traffic safety?

Recently, Google signaled its intention to make significant changes to the appearance of ads on Google Maps. According to a spokesman, the company is currently “developing and experimenting with a variety of ad formats on [Google] Maps that make it easier for users to find businesses as they navigate the world around them. For example, Maps users may start to see promoted pins for nearby coffee shops, gas stations or lunch spots along their driving route.” The Maps app levels off Google’s increasing ability to track individual users as they switch between devices — mobile, desktop, and tablet — wherever they may be. It is an ideal vehicle for channeling dynamic, customized, and targeted marketing to consumers in real time because of its near universal adoption by Android consumers — if not explicitly, then implicitly via the array of free and subsidized navigation apps funded in large part by advertising revenues generated from the Google empire.

While turning navigation apps into advertising vehicles benefits consumers by alerting them to deals that are “too good to miss,” this poses a potential challenge for traffic safety. Distracted driving is a complex problem, but luckily the Federal Communications Commission may have the tools needed to help us stay safe on the roads. That is, of course, if the agency is willing to venture into non-neutral territory.

[Bronwyn Howell is general manager for the New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation and a faculty member of Victoria Business School, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.]