098Joe:
You bunch of Luddites. What’s wrong with satnavs? Mine has live traffic information that is more accurate than highways agency information, and guides me around traffic jams etc. Surely safer listening to instructions than fumbling with a map?
To be honest, I use satnav only very infrequently, although it’s always available.
What I do at the start of a journey is sit down and look at the map, plan an appropriate route, and take very brief notes (often in code or semi-diagramatically). The vast majority of journeys can be noted in a few lines, once you’ve had a look at the map.
If it’s a particularly complex route at the destination and I’m not familiar with the locality, then I’ll pull over once I’ve completed the bulk of the journey, and do the same again, taking a look at the map, refamiliarising myself with the details of the remaining route and the turns, taking a few notes if required.
If I use the satnav while driving at all, it is only to ensure that I’m actually on the pre-planned route and where I am relative to turns. When possible I try to do without it.
Admittedly I occasionally come a cropper and make a wrong turn at confusing junctions, or sail past a turn I needed to make, on a totally unfamiliar route based just on notes and following road signs, but when following the satnav blindly without having planned, I’ve made much worse mistakes (the sort that leave you drenched in sweat to get out of), and the mental workload is noticeably higher when you just follow the satnav and have no prior idea of where you’re going.
In the end satnav is a tool that supplements planning and route knowledge, not a total substitute for them, and what firms want to discourage is people who just put in a postcode and set off, without ever having looked at the route they’re taking!
Because they’re the pillocks that go down country lanes and under 9ft high bridges, whereas anyone who had looked at the route as a whole first, wouldn’t make the mistake.
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