UKC

This is for those who use sat-navs in their cars/vehicles.

Is there a menu option turned on by default that disables the driver's common sense and ability to read road signs?

I'm asking because yet again we've had a truck come down the lane and almost get stuck. The tarmac part of the road ends next to our house and it continues as a (very at this time of year) muddy lane which is marked on the sat-nav maps as a road, it's a BOAT. We've had enough do this over the years that the council put a "no through road" sign at the top of the lane. It doesn't help that the lane is pretty steep, around 25%, one milk tanker realised he'd gone wrong but when he applied the brakes the milk surged forward and pushed him down the hill.

Other incidents include:

A delivery van driver who managed to drive all the way down the muddy part of the lane only to be stopped at the ford across the beck when he beached the van.

A couple of young lasses who saw the mud and hit the brakes only to slide all the way past our house and garden for about 50 metres.

Several local taxi drivers trying a short cut.

The above mentioned milk tanker got stuck in the sudden flattening outside our house as his auxiliary rear axle prevented his drive axle from providing any traction! We had to get one of the local farmers across to pull him out.

We were in the full swing of the Santa trains yesterday....and a family came up to Beamish from Manchester- only to get lost on an industrial estate because it has the same post code. A map, yes, that boring, old fashioned thing, a map, would have got them to us in time for the last train.

Sx

In reply to Bob:

I have to watch the Garmin satnav like a hawk. In the 4 settings available not one will produce a route that is not either bloody minded, stupid, inconvenient, ends in a boat (a boat?!) or longer than it need be, or a combination thereof. Relax for a moment and you regret it. And it's not always safe to consult the map.
So it may not always be the driver's fault! Though the madder examples probably are!

In reply to Bob:

I just use mine as a map. Never switch the sat nav on.

In reply to Removed User:


I just use a map.

In reply to Robert Durran:

I drive in the general direction of my destination (8 points on the compass will do) and then follow my nose / road signs. Never fails (including for large European moves).

In reply to James Jackson:


Indeed, that is a good way to travel and it keeps you much more in touch with the real world rather than making the journey just another slave to technology.

I think the only possible justifiable use of Sat-nav is once within a conurbation,but even then I would, on principle, rather get a bit lost.

In reply to Robert Durran:
I use Copilot and like it a lot. But the thing to remember is - don't let it tell you to do anything stupid.

The traffic facility and the ability to divert easily because of traffic is a real time-saver and makes car journeys so much more predictable.

Wonderful thing - so long as you understand that it's a computer and if it gets garbage in, it will produce garbage out.

Of course the great thing about sat nav is if you ignore it, it will recalculate. So if it tells you something silly, just don't do it, and hopefully it will then tell you something more sensible.

Neil

In reply to Robert Durran:


Same here. 'cept mine shows up on a screen.

In reply to Removed User:

But mine is cheaper. And folds up. So there.

In reply to Robert Durran:

Folds up to almost as small as the satnav? :p

In reply to Robert Durran:


I use mine every working day, the main part of my job involves traveling all round the county to different sites for a utility company.
My sauna had a database of about 4000 different sites on it and I visit about 400 of them.
Some are easy to find but others are not and often are tucked away down farm tracks and the like, they are also not sign posted.

N the days before sat navs I had a box of AtoZ maps plus os maps and had to make lots of phone calls to different people for some local knowledge.
These days I just input the name and 99% of the time it takes me to the gate, the 1% can be interesting but a bit of common sense tells me that it may be wrong when it's trying to direct me in to a lake or river and that I might have to get the map box out of the back.
Quite often these days though I will just open Google maps, the sites can be seen on the photo map and you can normally see the access road/track too.

In reply to Dax H:


I wouldn't criticise anyone for using sat-nav for work as in much the same way I wouldn't consider it cheating for mountain rescue to use GPS.