Laptop GPS World

"In 200 meters turn right" my GPS tells me. Do I trust her?

When I first started to use GPS at the beginning of 2003, I remember I didn't trust it as much as I do now. Those days I used Microsoft MapPoint 2002 running on a laptop PC. At first I though my navigational skills were better than a software program could provide. I still remember vividly how I would distrust this technology. More often than not I would take a different route than suggested by GPS. However, over time I realized that GPS knows a lot of what I don't, even though sometimes my own experience may indeed bring me to my destination faster and/or via a shorter route.

These days I don't argue with GPS as much as I used to 5 years ago. Most of the time I just enter my destination and start driving without much thinking about how I'm going to get there. I just let the GPS do the thinking. I actually believe the best part of using GPS navigation is that while driving we can think of more important stuff than just which road to take next.

As we increasingly rely on this technological marvel, and much less on our own judgement, mistakes happen. TechRadar.com published a list of top seven satnav disasters in the UK. It is always better to learn from mistakes of others, so here it is: The UK's top satnav disasters

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Marvin Hlavac

PC GPS software reviews | Stores offering discounts to our members: Semsons & Co. Inc. and Deluo Electronics

...Yes and no. Two war stories will illustrate my hopes and fears about today's GPS:

1. I was driving my son to a meeting on an icy winter evening this past December (2007). I normally take a specific route that's both fast and direct. My TMC-enabled nuvi started me up the same route, but in the middle insisted that I get off on another freeway and then take a rural road. What the hell? What idiot would do that? I ignored the directions and continued on my time-tested route... only to discover that a bridge was closed further up! We spent over an hour sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic until, mercifully, the bridge was finally reopened. I'm convinced the GPS knew that the bridge was closed, but none of the displays showed why it had selected an alternate route...

2. Several months ago, I was traveling on business to Philadelphia. It's been many years since I've been to that part of the country but I knew that the streets were a tangled mess (as they are in all cities of that age), so I arranged to rent a GPS unit with my rental car. It turned out to be a Garmin StreetPilot C330 (I think; might have been a 310). To make a long story short, I left my business meeting late and had to rush to get back to the airport. On the route, practically the first key turn onto the freeway system was closed for construction! Unable to make that turn, the StreetPilot then routed me right through the heart of Philadelphia, all surface streets and stop lights, despite the fact that I knew there were nearby freeways. The StreetPilot display was too small to give me enough of a view to see where the freeways were relative to my location, so I couldn't override the route selection. After a nerve-wracking drive, I made it to the airport... just barely. Needless to say, when I decided to buy a GPS unit for myself, I never even looked at the StreetPilot line.

Steve, that's quite undarstandable that you ignored GPS telling you to exit the highway without explanation why. I would do just as you did. It's really the fault of the implementation of the traffic feature of the GPS unit.

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Marvin Hlavac

PC GPS software reviews | Stores offering discounts to our members: Semsons & Co. Inc. and Deluo Electronics

Marvin: I agree, and this goes back to my comment, in another thread, about the importance of a display that shows a large portion of your local region at one time. Sometimes, it's about the only way to figure out what your GPS is trying to do...

Does being directed to change sides on a divided highway and enter oncomming traffic count? TomTom 6 on a Treo 650. The road had been changed to 4 lane divided and the program thought I was off the road. TomTom wanted me to drive on the old road that was on the other side.

How about being directed to a location that was on a railrod track? The address was off about 2 blocks. This also was TomTom 6 on a palm.

Ha ha, TomTom uses map data by Teleatlas. A few years ago the data was so bad that quite a few users complained about bizarre routing. This has improved quite a lot, though. But I don't think there will ever come a day when we can completely trust any navigation solution :-)

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Marvin Hlavac

PC GPS software reviews | Stores offering discounts to our members: Semsons & Co. Inc. and Deluo Electronics

Nice stories there

I'm fairly new to the GPS world, my 1st system was S&T2007 and now IG4.
I use my car and SatNav mainly for fun Sunday drives where I just drive away into small unpaved rural roads without much planning. When I've decided I had enough I just hit the "Go Home" shortcut in "shortest route" setting and let the GPS take me on the right path

So far I was highly impressed with the level of accuracy and details of even the smallest alleys in the rural areas of Quebec.

I have noticed it's better to verify the route suggested by the GPS just to make sure you are in the general right direction and didn't mistakenly typed the destination city in the wrong province / state

It's also good to know the major roads names and headings to facilitate complex highway interchanges navigations.

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Thinkpad X41 Carputer ~ IG4
Montreal ~ QC