Satnav woes.

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!

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 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.

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

But Google knows the traffic so I love that too!

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.

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.

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 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.

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 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.

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

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 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.

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.

Garmin years ago in France kept telling us to turn round, when we were following road signs to our destination, and once took us up a narrow dead end in a small village, when we should just have stayed on the large road which missed the village all together. Am just going to try Wayz.

I use google maps these days and find it very accurate with door to door service. The map also shows any prospective delays on the route and if they are severe gives an alternative choice.

The first time I used a satnav I had borrowed it from my brother in law. We were travelling to a part of the country that I didn't know and towing a trailer with a yacht on it. It did a good job and I was overjoyed that it actually gave me notice of upcoming turns unlike my normal navigator (husband). Within a week we had bought our own, a Garmin. It was amazing and took us, and my sister, all over Europe. Eventually it died one day and I set off into the wilds of North Yorkshire to visit a company that said they could hopefully mend it. Although I am a reasonably good navigator, and I was armed with an outdated map, I couldn't find it at the very end of the journey. Two weeks previously, I had bought my first smartphone, but only used it to call and text. For the first time ever, I turned on mobile data and Google maps. Eureka, I was only 200 yards away. When I found out the exorbitant cost of the repair I decided that I would just use my phone in future.
When we changed our car it actually took me a month to realise we had an inbuilt satnav. To be fair I rarely use either my phone or the satnav unless I am going somewhere new. Most of the young people I know constantly use one or the other.

A sat nav is not a replacement for common sense. Too many people are completely ignorant of the geography of this country and would be hard pushed to locate Manchester on a map.

We always check routes on google maps before we go and the person in the passenger seat has the road atlas on their lap. We set the sat nav but generally only use it for the last few miles of a journey where you are quite often on small roads, in one way systems, or making lots of turns - hence the confusion around Salisbiry, referred to above.

A few years ago sadly we were having to travel to Aberystwyth to attend my husband's cousin's funeral, which was to be held at 2 pm. Satnav said it would take 4 hours, so we actually left home at 8 am, giving us 6 hours, enough time to have a coffee/comfort stop and still be in good time.

I am not a satnav fan so I always have my map book to hand. I became suspicious when we were passing towns that my map indicated were nowhere near where we needed to be but DH thought that the satnav knew best ...

Long story short, we came to a junction where the satnav said we should turn right, taking us into North Wales (!) but I insisted we should turn left as indicated on my map. Not being able to deny what was shown on the map, DH did turn left and we made it to the funeral with 10 minutes to spare, no comfort stop, no coffee, nearly 6 hours after we'd left home. So I am now never without a "proper" map!

Well, anyone using a SatNav is, frankly, asking for trouble. As GSM said, "U-turn on a motorway"?! [maybe it meant at the next junction, but with those things, who knows??).

Stories abound of giant trucks being sent down tiny country lanes - and then struggling to reverse back again! -- and a friend out dogwalking almost got run down by a courier van who was using a track that isn't a made-up road, but a SatNav shows it as a road, so can have nitwits using that shortcut without looking properly.

We have nice mapbooks, and if going somewhere new, plan the route. Google prints can show general plans of a town or city, then more detailed street maps, and they can all be printed off to reference. For traffic news, use the radio so that the bulletins cut in with any late news.

I'm not surprised that tech-mad youth thinks that maps are 'old hat'. The Apprentice show, last year I think, featured groups who had that task to find a dozen or so items, at the cheapest overall prices, and report back at a given time, end of the day. They tried to use maps on mobile phones, instead of doing a common-sense thing of buying a map and planning a time-saving route. They both ended up running round town (Brighton I think it was) like the proverbial headless chickens. Neither group found the main market, where they could have quickly obtained several items!

We use Waze, but even that can have its moments. Last year we programmed it for a route from Newbury to Wilton House , near Salisbury.

DH decided not to use a dual carriage way but a single carriageway A road that ran parallel. Not usually a problem, it quickly recalculates. In this case it didn't. I won't bore you with all the details. All I will say is that we ended up in a maze of tiny roads somewhere near Salisbury going round in circles. Thankfully we had a road atlas in the car and that rescued us and got us to our destination. At which point Waze woke up and announced triunphantly 'You have reached your destination'

We have an inbuilt one in the car, I find it always gets me there but sometimes uses very strange routes to achieve its aim.
Hubby on the other hand wont follow either my instructions or the sat navs and always goes mental at it for getting him lost, or going the wrong way round. If he listened to all the instructions it would get him there but he always knows better....or so he thinks. I always drive if the two of us go out together somewhere we don't know as it is easier than listening to him rant and rave.
Not be the first time I have stopped the car and offered him the chance to get out and make his own way back home, cos Im nice like that.

We are always getting lost and end up arguing. So this time I'm prepared. We are going to Buxton and I have looked on Google Maps scrolled right through the directions to near our destination and have written down the way to get there. There are 8 left and right turns so if tom-tom doesn't work we would have definitely struggled to find our holiday rental.
I am also going to plug in the mobile in car to see if I can get it up on the screen. We've never bothered before.

I rarely use mine..only if I don't know the area

TillyWhiz

I use Google maps. The satnav was the third person in our marriage and my husband used to argue with her too!

My husband simply ignores her if he doesn't like her instructions. Sadly our new satnav only has a female voice, our last had a male alternative and he took more notice of him.
If we're driving together I simply turn the sound right down and only speak to him about the route if I know that we're veering wildly off course.
It's very useful if we're advised of traffic jams or roadworks, but he always insists on staying on the road if it is his preferred route. Because of this we've spent many hours stationary on major roads.