Will it never end? Satnav clampdown

[staceyb]

Heebeegeetee said:

henrycrun said:

Heebeegeetee said:

philbes said:

When driving alone I have the sat-nav low down on the central console completely out of my sight and I just rely on the voice directions. If the wife is with me then the sat-nav is mounted on the passanger side window so the screen is below the top of the dash - in her view but not distracting to me.

I think that in a town looking at the screen for directions must distract the driver's attention from the road to a dangerous degree.

From my experience the voice directions are often completely wrong and cannot be relied on.

Audio Only is the way to go. What system is it BTW ?

Only used Tom Toms, so far.

Buy a better Sat-Nav then, even Co-pilot from O2 is miles better than Tom-Tom. You should never really have to look at your Sat-Nav screen.

[Heebeegeetee]

staceyb said:

Buy a better Sat-Nav then, even Co-pilot from O2 is miles better than Tom-Tom. You should never really have to look at your Sat-Nav screen.

Well lets do this exercise Stacey, in Leicester, at night. Its a simple task, and if you think you can get to an address safely and legaly i'll give £200 to a charity of your choice.

Stacey, i take a bit of an exception to your comment - i've navigated around lots, hundreds? - of cities throughout europe and i do say that indeed i need to look at the screen. I either look at the screen or i look at a map, it has to be one or the other, and at night the only way to look at a map is to turn the interior light on. Plus, as i've said, now i'm older i have to whip my specs off to read a map. Stacey, if i'm not looking at the sat-nav scren then i have to look at the road signs, is there a difference? And i took this picture myself of these road signs last year, of what use are they?

Very often nowadays, the road signs are plain wrong, or/and the layout of the junction is wrong. In these cases sat nav can be very useful.

But look, lets do this exercise. lets's split the cost of you coming over to leicester, its not a million miles away, bring hubby/partner/dad if you wish, we'll have a bite to eat and then lets see if you can navigate to this address without checking your map or sat-nav en route. I say you won't do it. Remember, when you want to check your map you can't stop on red routes, you can't stop in bus lanes and i'm not sure about the legal position of stopping on double yellows to check your map. I would normally be in an articulated lorry and i simply cannot just stop anywhere.

Stacey, you can't tell me that you don't look at your heater controls, or your stereo or speedo when driving, there really is no difference between that and a glance at the sat nav scen to confirm the voice instructions.

Two years ago i drove a week in the french alps on my own, guided by sat-nav. It was tremendous. I had a problem in Le Puy en Velay, which i think was due to how i'd set a way point, and the only other time i had to use the map was for a road closure. I had another week the following year and the sat-nav wasn't so good, don't know why so i bought another, later Tom Tom. Are you sure co-pilot would take me round the alps?

There are more mistakes in the tom tom mapping in France than in the uk. Then again, maps have errors, deliberate ones, its how they preserve copyright.

[Peter Ward]

I like my TomTom as well. The 910 is best (I had a ONE and a 510 previously) because it reads out road names and numbers which makes huge difference. I didn't think it would until I tried it and I wouldn't be without this feature now. Of course this is now filtering down the range and is available in other makes too, but do go for it if you can.

BTW, my sucker is within the swept area, but overall both the mounting and unit are within the bonnet area of my field of view. Considering this to be a visibility hazard is just plain daft. I think the reason why this area is now considered to be "swept" is that in the old days car windscreen wipers parked quite high up the screen, but now they park right down below the rear edge of the bonnet for aerodynamic reasons. On an old car the positioning of my TomTom would probably pass such a "swept area" test. The law needs to be updated before being used for stuff like this, or the police will lose respect for enforcing something that's clearly based on historic car design that has been superceeded.

[Darth Paul]

Peter Ward said:

I like my TomTom as well. The 910 is best (I had a ONE and a 510 previously) because it reads out road names and numbers which makes huge difference. I didn't think it would until I tried it and I wouldn't be without this feature now. Of course this is now filtering down the range and is available in other makes too, but do go for it if you can.

My copilot has this feature but I can't get on with it. By the time its read it out, you've gone past the road!

[Heebeegeetee]

Some other points - house numbers. Maps don't have house numbers. A-Z's have some numbers on long roads, but thats it. Very often a sat-nav can get you to the door of an address without you having to drive and look at house numbers at the same time. Post codes - any maps do post codes? If you're looking for a company or a business address, sometimes the post code can get you very near to where the business is in a particular road.

What difference can there be between looking at a sat nav screen or looking for a business or a house number?

[Boosted LS1]

Thing with a map is that you don't need to keep stopping to read it if you're a competant driver. Whats wrong with planning a route to get close to the destination and then remembering to take the third left and first right after that. With just an occassional stop to check your position if you made a mistake. It's worked for me all my driving life. I can see the sat nav really helping in strange city but nowadays people aren't thinking for themselves anymore and it's the non-thinkers doing less thinking that worry me, ie a sort of dumbing down in safety imo. They're just glued to the sat nav screen.

Could we just sell them to intelligent, good drivers?

[Heebeegeetee]

Boosted LS1 said:

Whats wrong with planning a route

How do you follow your plan?

[Mr2Mike]

Boosted LS1 said:

It's worked for me all my driving life. I can see the sat nav really helping in strange city but nowadays people aren't thinking for themselves anymore and it's the non-thinkers doing less thinking that worry me, ie a sort of dumbing down in safety imo. They're just glued to the sat nav screen.

You don't have to be glued to the screen, the sat nav tells you where to turn off. The only time I ever look is when the exit on roundabouts is ambiguous (e.g. sometimes the sat nav includes service lanes as exits, other times not).

I always print a route off anyway just so I have a reasonable idea of where I'm going, but it's when you enter a busy urban area with lots of one way systems etc. that the sat nav really helps.

[Glassman]

What next eh? At this rate, reading a newspaper while driving on a motorway will be made illegal.