I sometimes use a Gps mounted between the handle bars.
Just my opinion of course, but I personally think that this location is a big part of the reason why many people who use a GPS while riding find it distracting. It forces a person to redirect their sight significantly away from the road to see it, which also diverts their attention away from the road. If an on-board GPS is going to be used while in motion I think that the least attention diverting, and therefore least distracting, place for it is up high where the amount of deviation of your eyes away from the road that is required to see it is the least.
I know that there are those who will say that the speedo, tach, fuel gauge, temperature gauge, etc. are down low and they do not present a problem. I don't see these things in the same category as a GPS. We only glance extremely quickly at these gauges, literally a few tenths of a second at most, and we have gleaned the information that we need and our attention is back on the road ahead. A GPS demands a much longer look to aquire the information that we need, especially in an area where there are a lot of roads and therefore a crowded GPS screen. We are still talking small amounts of time, but in a purely hypothetical comparison 6 tenths of a second is still double 3 tenths of a second. My point being that it will always take significantly longer to focus and acquire the needed information off of a GPS screen than the amount of time needed to glean the required information off of a fuel gauge. At 70 MPH, that extra time can put you in harms way faster than you think.
Humans are not as good at multi-tasking while driving as we like to believe. There are many videos available from studies that have been done where cell/smart phone use while driving has been tested. People who are convinced that they can use their phone while driving, and who regularly do, ultimately always crash in simulators and find out that they are not as good as they thought that they were. This includes teenagers and young people who's brains are more naturally adept at multi-tasking than older people. It seems that we view driving (riding) as easy because we do it so seamlessly, but it requires more of our attention than we appreciate. A GPS is no where near as distracting as using a cell/smart phone in my opinion, and these studies seem to agree with that, but it still does require significantly more attention than a fuel gauge does, so I put mine up high in my line of sight and hopefully I have put the odds in my favour.
To Yarz, the above is the reason why I posted the links to the dash shelf. It is my opinion that anything that you add that will require regular monitoring, such as a GPS, should be up high in this location so as not to divert your eyes from the road for any longer than necessary. Items that do not require visual interaction, or very little and infrequently, can be placed elsewhere.
psr-usa.com
www.st1300-accessories.co.uk
