Satnav woes.

Google maps via my mobile to the in car screen with the voice turned off let's you see the map as you drive (and I am usually on my own so it is difficult to check a map while driving) - of course you have to use common sense as well, but I have avoided road works and obstacles because of the Sat Nav - wouldn't be without it.

I use Waze, it’s much better than Google Maps. But I always check the routes before I leave because you can sometimes see that a problem may be brewing. That’s often the case too around here. Too much housing has been built locally and the traffic doesn’t cope at all well. It can easily take me 15 minutes to travel 1 mile.

Sat available directs anyone coming to my house down a totally overgrown track. It is just about passable on a land rover but no way could a car or delivery make it down it. The actual road to my house is shown a a dead end. Very strange as the overgrown road clearly has never been used in years.

I was going to say that you can now use Waze for navigation as well as live ‘info’. It seems to work well as up to date with road works, delays etc

I agree OP. I don't think people (not just the young) can any longer manage without a technological appendage. They feel compelled to use some sort of gizmo rather than common sense or their memory banks. Sometimes it's good to flex the old brain muscle.

Although we have built in sat navs in the cars I wouldn’t be without a decent road atlas too, as, like everyone else, that’s how we have navigated journeys over the years.

I used to have a Tom Tom which eventually lost its satellite. So now I use Google Maps to get from place to place. As I have, in the past year, migrated south from Cheshire to Berkshire, I have had to learn new routes and the sat nav has been invaluable.

We have a TomTom which has been brilliant in rural Italy and off-the-beaten-track USA.
I've had to switch maps and update it of course.
I also use my mobile.
I do use Google if I know there are likely to be roadworks and it's been a godsend since the chaos of HS2 re-routing.

I've also used it recently for the last 2 miles of getting home as there have been so many roadworks within couple of miles. I know it's saved me lots of time and fuel just between me and my gym and me and my son's house!

Regarding trucks getting stuck - apparently they should have purchased a commercial type sat-nav which you can adapt to your vehicle details so that you don't get sent under low bridges in an articulated lorry or down a narrow lane with a wide load. Unfortunately a car tutype stem is 10x cheaper so even quite big firms used to just buy those.

Now of course they will be built in.

I rely in Google maps for long or new journeys. It has helped me out on several occasions.

I recommend using postcodes rather than street names. I made that mistake and drove halfway to Glasgow when the address I wanted was in Edinburgh.

When DH was alive he refused to use a satnav and was pretty good at finding the way using maps. He also loved driving and I loved looking out the window.

But we once ended up in a field using Google maps and I still have to give visiting people visual clues to my house. They always think they know but the google mapping car hasn't been here.

I agree that younger people are unfamiliar with map reading or relying on their memory which is a shame.

Grammeretto There is nothing new about young people not being able to read maps.

Back in the mid-1990s, I went back to university for a year to study for an MA in Landscape archaeology. Our opening week included a session on map reading. I was amazed to discover, tutor apart, that I was the only person in the room who could read an ordnance survey map with any confidence, let alone inteprete what I read.

My fellow students were almost entirely archaeology graduates. How on earth they managed to get through a degree in archaeology without coming to grips with maps, I do not understand.

I did O and A level geography at school and at both levels the exam included a map reading exercise, not route finding specifically, but reading and interpreting what was on the map and reaching conclusions about the area.

A map is a thing of beauty.
I love them. 💗

But Google knows the traffic so I love that too!

I love that google maps can say congestion 2 miles ahead and then reroute the planned journey. If I was following a map I wouldn’t be aware of the congestion till I was sitting in a tail back of traffic.

NemosMum

I would also recommend Waze, but whatever navigation assistant you use, make sure your common sense is in the driving seat!

Another recommendation for Waze from me.

I still have DH's collection of OS maps. As you say NotSpaghetti, they are beautiful. All those railway lines!

I can read them but when you are driving alone you can't keep stopping to read the map and road signs are not always clear.

One of my worst times was losing my way in East Anglia with a carful of squabbling children. I eventually stopped the car and sat at the roadside weeping. A tractor driver reported me to the police!