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One might not always have an opportunity to research beforehand, as when a new route to a destination is needed when you are already out.
What I'll always do in such cases is not start immediately but zoom out on the screen to get a view of the entire route.
Also, it can be useful at times to switch to satellite mode to compare your view with a picture when the map road pattern seems to be off. The picture may be old, but landscapes seldom change that much.
one woman drove her car into a swollen river ford because her GPS(Sat Nav we call it) told her to, her husband was swept away and drowned, she was only saved because a guy put himself at risk to get her out. common sense? common sense bypass more like.
Although I rarely use the audio on it, the GPS app I use has saved me from a hitting few road hazards and most likely a few speeding tickets. A couple times warned me of deer. Plus some have useful notifications of gas stations, stores and restaurants.
Waze is community populated. Someone drives by a bunch of deer by the road and notes it for that location. Same for cops sitting behind a tree running radar.
GPS never finds my house. I live in the middle of a city of 700k people, in a neighbourhood that is 200 years old, on a street that is 70 years old. Not a new street in the boonies.
The problem is that GPS for cars is designed, well, for cars. And my "street" is a pair of sidewalks with mature trees down the middle. The residents park in two back lanes, one behind the even side of the street, one on the odd. My house is on the even side, but GPS always sends people to the odd side.
It seems that no one listens to us explain where our house is, delivery people just want our address and cut us off. Then we wait for the inevitable phone call "Driver here, where are you exactly?" Makes us chuckle every time. The last time this happened I was waiting for a shuttle van from our car dealership. I told him to hang on, and jogged over to meet him. It's just easier sometimes.
GPS is hugely useful to MOST in commercial driving. It is hugely useful to MANY consumers in getting around traffic, alternate routing, searching places to eat, drink, stop, gas, etc, etc. Still others are just bad at directions and could use the turn-by-turn specificity provided by GPS. They help far more than they hurt.
Gone are the days of paper maps or stopping at convenience stores to ask for directions; most of us think this is a good thing.
It's amazing to consider the increase in economic efficiency provided by GPS systems. I was a purchasing agent for an IT company that did little projects all around the country, and I would often send our technicians to pick up materials at vendors in unfamiliar cities - countless hours of effort and headache were saved by them just plugging the addresses into their phones/GPS, not to mention them getting to the job sites and hotels. Multiply that by millions for all the travelling salesmen, business travelers, delivery drivers etc who get where they need to be with far less effort and error than in decades past.
GPS is hugely useful to MOST in commercial driving. It is hugely useful to MANY consumers in getting around traffic, alternate routing, searching places to eat, drink, stop, gas, etc, etc. Still others are just bad at directions and could use the turn-by-turn specificity provided by GPS. They help far more than they hurt.
Gone are the days of paper maps or stopping at convenience stores to ask for directions; most of us think this is a good thing.
In my Air Force career, I lived by maps. I like maps. I like just reading maps like reading a book. I even have framed maps on my office walls as art.
When planning a trip, I used to build the same kind of route books for myself that I built for fighter pilot missions: map excerpts along the route of increasing scale as you get closer to the "target."
But I've pretty much given up paper maps since going with my cell phone GPS. I'll still study my route before taking off, but that's easy enough on a nice-sized phone.
Here is what I wished phones had: A single button to switch between "Point Of View" and a small overhead scale showing current location to destination. I'd rather be in small scale seeing my changing position relative to the destination for most of the trip, switching to POV only when the route became complicated.
A problem I often have with google maps is I can't read the road names and numbers on my antique iphone 5S. Especially if the route mapping line is overlaid. If I zoom in, the lettering tends to rescale back smaller. I have to zoom so far in I lose sense of overall location.
A couple of weeks ago I was driving from upstate New York to Queens. I was just mindlessly doing what the Google Maps lady said and didn't realize until it was too late that she was taking me through midtown Manhattan just in time for Friday rush hour. I was stuck in traffic for so long that while I was sitting on 57th St the left turn rules changed. Her solution was to tell me to do a U-TURN. ON PARK AVE. IN THE MIDDLE OF RUSH HOUR. IN A CHEVY TAHOE. That was when I pulled a Luke Skywalker and trusted in the force to guide me the rest of the way.
A GPS will say "turn right, now" as you are approaching the last few yards to the intersection and it is understood by anyone with any common sense that it means turn right at the immediately upcoming road not instantaneously veer right over the curb and across the sidewalk and into a tree.
Actually, the GPS can confuse folks in this regard as not everyone has the "audio directions" turned on.
For example, if you're on the highway going 60 mph then you have to understand that "turn in 0.1 miles" means turn at the next exit.
However if you're driving through slow traffic in an urban environment, you have to know that even if you turn in 100 feet, you could still be taking the wrong turn. Also, sometimes it only directs you to the general location and not the exact location, especially if the location is near other buildings and stores. There are also times where it can't find a signal.
But my point is that GPS systems are far from perfect.
Quote:
Originally Posted by oceangaia
Waze is community populated. Someone drives by a bunch of deer by the road and notes it for that location. Same for cops sitting behind a tree running radar.
While it's good that waze warns you of cops in the area, they're usually long gone by the time you actually pass the location. And cops themselves can easily open up Waze to see where they have been spotted. Still a good feature though.
I enjoy the fact that it can detect your speed limit, warn you of potholes, and of cars/construction on the side. But google maps is still a great, "no frills get you to point A to point B" awesome app.
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