Do we rely on our sat navs too much?

I have never had much of a sense of direction, so I find my sat nav useful. I still look at maps and use route planners.

Knowiing that the sat nav is far from perfect I would not fall into the trap of going the wrong way in a one-way system, though following passengers’ instructions has caused me to do this several times.

I’m well aware that my sat nav does not necessarily choose the best route, but if I’m lost I can follow the instructions without getting stressed. Having to keep finding somewhere to stop and look at a map is stressful and there is the temptation to glance at the map when driving, which is dangerous.

I’ve stated before how much I love maps (I even did cartography as my main degree, how sad is that?!) and have a HUGE collection of maps and atlases. I much prefer reading a map in the comfort of my home, on holiday, or out walking. I can roughly picture the lie of a land using contours and make a rough guess on how old an area is simply by looking at the street pattern. I am not a huge fan of electronic maps – I was so fed up with Google I sent them a huge review with a long list of suggested improvements some of which they now seem to have taken on board! Still plenty of room for improvement.

So it was a momentous decision in my family when I finally made my purchase which was a source of endless, apparently rib-tickling, humour for many months after. Oh, how they chortled. Map Boy had bought a Sat Nav. But not any old sat nav…

You see, when it comes to DRIVING, maps aren’t a perfect aid. They don’t often tell you which roads are busy at certain times of the day or certain days of the week or tell you where there is an accident and give you an immediate option to take an alternative route with an up-to-date and up-to-the-minute ETA. You can’t zoom into a map to find out where the nearest supermarket petrol station is or the location of a nearby cash-point down a side alley or the location of the nearest free wi-fi spot. With voice-recognition and bluetooth navigation is a breeze. A map doesn’t give you turn-by-turn navigation or tell you which lane you need to be in well in advance of a junction in a city centre at rush-hour (and neither do the hopeless road signs put up by the local council) and even the most detailed road atlases won’t tell you about one-way systems in the smallest market town in the back of beyond. It will even tell which mini-roundabouts I can cut corners off… :). And how else do you get the maps of the whole of Western Europe into an object a few inches across and less than an inch deep?

****, I’ve even customised mine so that it gives me the 1:50000 OS map road symbols making those on my display blue, green, magenta, orange, yellow and white.

I have yet to be led down a cliff or into a lake. Like the majority of road users, I do have some common sense. And I love my TomTom. Forget any of the others for cartographic appeal. Garmin, Mio, what are you thinking?! As for Binatone… what person of any sane mind or possessing even an ounce of intelligence would ever buy anything made by Binatone?!

If people want to keep stopping to use their maps in unfamiliar areas that is entirely their decision. If people are happy to place their faith in road signs put up by fat men in fluorescent jackets called Frank that is entirely up to them. Personally, I like to get ahead.

That said, I do miss those days of getting lost with the OH in the rain 🙂

I have had a Garmin for well over a year now and would make the following observations.

It is not as good as their marine products, I use both their GPS and chartplotters and have been very impressed by them, simpler data perhaps on those products but more safety critical.

Like my marine use I also carry a large scale up to date map with me.

Absolutely indispensable for the last couple of miles of a journey to a specific address I have not been to before.

Not so good for long distance journeys, with or without traffic information. Here is a for instance, I had to go from Scarborough to Chelford in Cheshire the other day, so M62, M60 etc, but set on fastest route It wanted me to turn off the M62 before I got to the M60 junction to follow the M627/A62 and back onto the M60, faster at 3am but not at 9am!

On the shortest route setting it has me doing some hilarious things, like south of the Humber Bridge on the A15 it takes me off the A15 up the slip road and back onto the A15 again, at that point the A15 sweeps round to the left so it probably is shorter by 50 metres or so, but presumably the mapping algorithm is not quite clever enough!

The only real problem with GPS is becoming too reliant on them, to the point where you blindly follow them without reading road signs etc, like all new technologies they have strengths and weaknesses, they are an indispensable addition to a map, useful for navigating complex motorway junctions etc but they will never completely replace paper maps, just as Kindles won’t replace books, or the internet/TV replace newspapers.

If you don’t have a good sense of direction, may I suggest setting your GPS to North up for navigation, then you will at least have an idea as to whether you are going in the right direction.

My project was the TomTom XL, it was………. 40% slower than the model it replaced, the TomTom OneXL. In standard performance tests (route calculation, recalculation) it was in some cases 50% slower than the OneXL.

This is just one issue, most people won’t notice that it is slower than the old model because they probably didn’t have the old model. This was fine for the business.

In my opinion, if you want the best and most reliable sat nav, buy an old TomTom, Go710, OneXL etc. Why? because all the components are of much higher quality than what they currently use. Every new TomTom by design, has cheaper components, cheaper plastics and has to run more code.

Fat Sam, Glad to hear you get accurate TMC information, the reason TomTom created HD traffic was because this was so unreliable and wasn’t making enough money from subscription content. HD traffic is certainly incredibly accurate, but I don’t use it enough to pay for it.

Chris, the only voice I need in the car is my own, whilst singing along to music. I find the interrupting satnav voice really annoying, especially when a song is reaching a crescendo with massive drum solo! 🙂

I drive with a Garmin (admittedly the maps are now a few years old but I still manage), I find it indispensible. I drive around the UK and Europe (in hire cars but take sat nav with me). Before sat nav I used to sit the night before I went anywhere for up to 2 hours printing maps out. I don’t need to do that anymore. It also has a traffic link that works reasonably well.

From memory it has never led me into a dangerous situation, but its all about common sense and also being aware of what you’re doing and actually looking at the signs around you, it has once or twice had me on some single track roads, but on the whole I wouldn’t do without it. I also don’t use the voice just watch the screen.

If it went off I think I have a reasonable enough sense of direction to get me where I want with the aid of normal road signs.