sat navs

[biggs682]

ok let me set the scene :

partners daughter just passed her driving test and for 18th nanny buys a sat nav for her and we got her an atlas as well . couple of weeks later 1st solo long journey from home in Northamptonshire to Norwich .

so programmes sat nav night before as early start (6.30) gets to Norwich 4 hours later , when asked good journey she replied didnt realise that the a14 went each way !

when asked more she admitted turning left at first junction even though sat nav said right and then couldnt uinderstand why an 1 hr later she was near to b/ham and no signs for cambridge so started to listen to sat nav rather than radio and turned round retracing her route , so what should have been a 2hr drive ended up being nearly 4hrs .

moral of story read an atlas and throw sat nav out of window

 

[Trembler49]

Or listen to the sat nav you numpty!!

 

[ufkacbln]

... or don't listen to the SatNav?

Ten stupidest SatNav mistakes

 

[gbb]

Errrrr i got an admission to make...

Just passed my test back in 1975 and decided i'd drive from Nottingham to Peterborough to see my mum and dad.
I knew you drove through Newark, then turned left onto the AI. Trouble is i took the wrong left and headed north ...but didnt realise it till i was near Doncaster.

It was one of those moments when you get an increasing sense somethings not right....errr, don't remember this bit of road.
Phoned my mum and said i wasn't going to make it after all.

Sat navs ? maps ?...pah.

 

[DiddlyDodds]

Women drivers !!!!! says it all

 

[DiddlyDodds]

Sat navs are the way to go ,, thick people driving into rivers are the same people who sit in the middle lane on a motorway. sit 2ft from the back of your car doing 70 ,,, drive bmw cars ,, shoot em all

 

[numbnuts]

Conversation with father and daughter on mobile phone (NOT me)
father – take the last exit at the roundabout
daughter – some moments later – dad I'm going back the same way as before

 

[XmisterIS]

I hate bloody satnavs! Sure, they have a use, but I always read the map first to make sure I know roughly where I'm going.

My ex had a satnav which she used to follow religiously. She had no idea at all about the actual geography of the routes that she took and couldn't read a map to save her life!

My biggest peeve with the damn things is that they don't seem to be intelligent enough to determine the suitability of the road for the vehicle that you're driving. I live on a narrow, residential street and we regularly get lorry drivers following their satnavs and thundering down our road, squeezing past parked cars by inches, just using our road as a thoroughfare, when they'd be better off taking the trunk route.

 

[Crackle]

Women drivers !!!!! says it all

Sat navs are the way to go ,, thick people driving into rivers are the same people who sit in the middle lane on a motorway. sit 2ft from the back of your car doing 70 ,,, drive bmw cars ,, shoot em all

People who trot out glib stereotypes - shoot 'em all.

 

[Night Train]

There is actually nothing wrong with satnavs, just the lack of intelligence of some drivers.

Some would have the same problem reading a map upside down.

When I use my satnav I check the overview map on the screen to see what route it has chosen and if it is suitable. I also check the road signs where it tells me to change direction to make sure that the road is both suitable and legal to drive down.
No different to when I used a paper map really.

 

[jonny jeez]

There is actually nothing wrong with satnavs, just the lack of intelligence of some drivers.

There is something wrong with satnavs.

don't get me wrong, I think they are a fantastic device and they still blow my fuses just thinking about how its all possible (I do the same when I consider just how amazing a mobile phone is).

But.

Using a satnav does remove you from the geography. When all I do is follow the green line, I arrive with no understanding of where this destination is in relation to the surrounding area...its a bit like flying.

Reading a map does immerse you in the area, you can visualise how far you are from other areas and towns and it all fits together so that later on, when asked to go to another place you can find your way there easily and understand where you are on a larger scale.

The times I've arrived at a destination dictated by the satnav only to realise its just up the road form a place I visited a short while ago (and could have remembered the way to if I'd used a map in the first place).

wouldn't be without one though.

 

[Arch]

Women drivers !!!!! says it all

Yeah, coz men never make mistakes eh?

I think satnavs are great for finding streets in unfamiliar towns, but for a long trip I still like to have a basic knowledge of my route in my head, and I've managed perfectly well without one for years. And I usually know enough to over-rule one when it's suggesting something daft.

I like the increasingly terse sounding (inmy head anyway) 'Recalculating' as you ignore requests to turn.

 

[Night Train]

There is something wrong with satnavs.

don't get me wrong, I think they are a fantastic device and they still blow my fuses just thinking about how its all possible (I do the same when I consider just how amazing a mobile phone is).

But.

Using a satnav does remove you from the geography. When all I do is follow the green line, I arrive with no understanding of where this destination is in relation to the surrounding area...its a bit like flying.

Reading a map does immerse you in the area, you can visualise how far you are from other areas and towns and it all fits together so that later on, when asked to go to another place you can find your way there easily and understand where you are on a larger scale.

I get what you are saying so I won't get into an argument about it.

But.

The satnav has the option to view the 'map' instead of the route and that, when zoomed out, shows the relative location of the destination to the starting point as if it were just a paper map.
By looking at that view to check the destination is correct one will get a good idea of where a place is.
It is no different to opening out a large map to determine that London is south east of Manchester and around 200 miles away and then traveling the route north to south by turning the map upside down to 'drive' southbound down the M6.

 

[ColinJ]

The fact is that many Sat Navs are programmed with datasets including historical rights of way that are not roads! That being true, use their outputs as suggestions, not as commands!

Not roads ...

They are warned, but still, they drive down it ...

 

[asterix]

Near home in France my Garmin tells me to drive along a road that hasn't been there for well over 60 years. The neighbours stone-built hen house is slap bang in the middle. It is shown as road on 1825 maps.