GPS technology....to make driving safer. Bloomberg Boot Camp, a report on today's technology. Navteq...the biggest company in the world when it comes to electronic maps used in navigation systems and such...now a part of Nokia....is partnering with STMicroelectronics to use the technology to improve safety. STMicro market development manager Mike Kasperian says the idea is to use navigation technology built onto a chip...so the car itself...not just the driver...knows where it is...and how fast it is traveling....

"True adaptive cruise control should know where the car is and this would enable that. This would tell the car ...the cruise is set for 70 but the speed limit on this road is 55. It's up to the carmaker on how they want to do this...alert the driver that you're now exceeding the speed limit. It could say, hey, you're on an exit ramp here so I'm going to reduce the speed automatically, I'm not going to leave it at 70 miles an hour and wait for you to turn it off. Another thing would be around a curve. So you're not on an exit ramp, but maybe it's a curve...that's not the speed of whatever you've had set for the straight line on the highway is not appropriate for this curve. It could automatically reduce it to the posted, safe, curve that would be in the database, safe speed for the curve that's in the database. These are algorithms that can be adjusted by the carmaker and the supplier of the system that ST and Navteq would be working with."

And the idea is to make the system affordable even for cars not equipped with expensive built in navigation. Bloomberg Boot Camp, I'm Fred Fishkin.