To Boldly Go…Wherever The Sat Nav Tells You

GPS vs paper

Sat Nav may beat a map but can I beat it?

I have quite a lot to say about Sat Navs so I’m sure I’ll be revisiting the topic at a later date, but for now I want to talk about the lure of blindly following the sat nav whatever it says. You know the one – I say go right, sat nav goes left…yeah, that.

I have one very simple thing to say on the matter – sat navs are not always right. Shock horror, I know. But really, they’re not.

Unfortunately, my husband thinks otherwise and will happily listen to the sat nav rather than me. I know I can’t expect Miss Sat Nav (because ours is a Miss) to know everything, but on a day trip to a safari park, when my husband is following a computer, who is telling him that the entrance is 15 minutes away, I would prefer him to listen to me who’s looking out of the car window to see the entrance straight in front of us.

Don’t get me wrong. I love sat navs – well, in terms of, instead of a map. Give me the ease of someone telling me which way to go, over turning the pages of an A-to Z anytime (to continue, please go from page 5 to page 64 and then straddle pages 32 and 33 – the street you’re looking for will be hidden in the crease). However, the sat nav brain is often more akin to a chav the morning after a bad night out than Einstein.

I’m not too sure where the black hole known as GPS is planning on taking  me half the time, even on the easiest routes.  I’ve been taken through the back streets of big cities which allow less than a car’s width through, onto car ferries across an expensive 15 minute stretch of water instead of a 5 minute drive down the road, into dead-ends, no-through roads and constant u-turns.

Then, of course, one of the worst things that can happen – the dreaded ‘recalculating’. I’m sure there is a sat nav stupidity disease that has yet to be fully diagnosed, but why is it, when you’re happily driving the correct way and you hear Miss Sat Nav say ‘recalculating’ you follow it blindly. We’re driving from Manchester down to London, which we know is M6 then M1, until for no apparent reason Little Miss Brainless decides to recalculate in the middle of the motorway -yes, during a straight road. She takes us off the M6 and hubby is sitting following her every word. Round a roundabout, up a dual carriageway, back around a roundabout and back onto the M6. I kid you not. And an added 10 minutes onto the journey time just to make me even more annoyed.

I’m sure Sat Nav companies will tell me its a blip, or my settings are wrong (don’t get me started on settings!), but for now, I really needed to a sat nav rant.

Because I do love sat navs. I really do – and I’m sure in the future I’ll be giving one away with love, but lets be honest, they’re not always the cleverest kid on the block

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