Ditto.
Traffic can be very heavy and very random in my city. You never know when a road is blocked.
I found a ridiculous road closure last week, and GPS routed me through a ton of backroads I had never taken before. It was only marginally faster, but I'm glad I was constantly moving, and not on a highway-turned-parking-lot for those 2 hours. Also, we got to experience some new scenery that we may never have seen otherwise, which is at least interesting.
It's random because everyone is using GPS to determine the routes that are not contested resulting in those areas becoming contested.
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I've noticed google maps always gives me the same, longer route while waze always gives me the fastest one. I believe maps has some kind of thing to manage traffic so it doesn't always give you the fastest route.
It blows my mind talking to my grandpa. His first question is how was traffic and the next is how did I get there. Then he'll say well next time take the 5 for 3.9 miles, then hop on 78 until you see the 420 then do a triple lane change to the 69 then you're home. And then I'm like sure thing grandpa I'll remember that for sure, as I'm tapping the home button on google maps lol.
My uncle was visiting a few months ago from overseas and I was driving him somewhere in my home town, and he off-handedly mentioned a different route he'd taken to get there in the 1960s lol
Then he’ll say well next time take the 5 for 3.9 miles, then hop on 78 until you see the 420 then do a triple lane change to the 69 then you’re home.
Without even knowing where those roads are I see you are on the West Coast.
Gen X and prior used a lot of landmarks to get from A to B where routes were commonly used. Landmark navigation is still heavily used today in places like India and Mexico where routes change hourly sometimes due to road closures and accidents that gps mapping cannot account for.
I once had to drive pre-google from Paris, France to Madrid, Spain and then to Valencia, Spain with nothing more than a AAA Auto Club map and a Philips Road Atlas. Not fun in many eays, but it was an adventure.
When grandpa asks "how did you get here" its a trap. Whatever answer you give will be wrong and will correct you with a lecture
Honestly they should just be pleased we don't have to spend as much effort and brain space as they did just for transit.
Sadly it's almost never the case where people say "oh, life is better for you! Cool!"
Studies have shown that using your brain to navigate once you get used to a route is beneficial.
I'm almost 50 and I never remembered my way anyplace pre map apps. I'd far rather be navigated for.
I used to buy a road atlas every few years, and for a while took advantage of my dad's AAA membership (they'd give you free maps)- at one time I had a map of every state (except Alaska and Hawaii) plus a number of cities...
And then google tries sending me through backcountry roads because iT sAvEs EiGhT mInUtEs in a 5 1/2 hour drive, not realizing its hard to travel 80kph on dirt roads cutting through hilly residential areas.
Oh my god when we moved from Oklahoma to a town in the mountains of Vermont this issue made the last day of driving hell! It's my fault for not checking the route on such a big trip though.
We had visited this town several times and always drove in on a major interstate with no issues. Well when we were finally loaded up with the 26' U-haul and towing a car behind, I just selected the default route to our new address in VT.
It was fine up until the last day when we started to get to the mountains and to my horror it was taking us on these tiny one lane roads up extremely steep mountains and super narrow roads.
When going downhill I was braking as hard as I could and the U-Haul was barely even slowing down and the brakes would be smoking at the bottom. And on the way up I was flooring it and barely getting up to 20 mph sometimes.
It's a miracle the truck made it through the dirt roads at the end. We finally rolled into town on what I now know is a historic, scenic route that the leaf peepers like to take.
Note for future - even with an automatic transmission, you can shift into a lower gear (2 or even L) on a downhill to have the engine slow you down and save your brakes.
The U-Haul automatically downshifts to engine break in tow mode when you tap the breaks. That was with engine breaking, the engine was screaming.
The gear selector also had the options for M, 2, 1 but I didn't use them for fear of blowing up the engine if it went at an even higher RPM.
I'll use Google maps to check for traffic on my route before leaving, but that's all.
If I'm going somewhere I've been more than two or three times, I don't use GPS.
I just like to have a little minimap following me like in a video game.
I use Waze whenever I drive, it also keeps me informed about accidents, cops, and other hazards.
Perhaps they have a short commute, or perhaps they have a phone mount in their car so they can see the traffic live on the map.
In my defense, I use it not because I don't know how to get where I need to go, but because it shows real time traffic info that could help me find another route to avoid said traffic rather than being stuck in that traffic. Driving through local roads to get to work sucks because sometimes it's fine but other times there are accidents or roadwork that causes backups.
Yeah, I once was driving to a routine place where there ended up being major roadwork that closed off a key stretch of road and the side streets ended up being a confusing maze. I eventually just ended up having to pull over and get the GPS out.
Guy at work always wonders how I get to the jobsites before him and he’s stuck for 15 minutes sometimes… I look up the traffic using maps first.
I used to be really proud of being able to get anywhere without a GPS until I moved to the city. You could've been somewhere a million times but when they close streets seemingly at random a GPS becomes nearly impossible to drive without if you care about your time. Fast forward five years and now I use the GPS even to go to work every morning.
Yeah, I always use navigation even on very familiar routes. Saves me time when there's an accident or unexpected event ahead of my route.
We were delayed for an hour on an already painfully long road trip once because my dad "Couldn't imagine why the GPS would recommend that" right before steering us into a traffic jam.
Right, and road closures. Even if I know the route like the back of my hand, I turn on navigation for the real-time information.
I've been saved many hours of sitting in traffic thanks to notices of road closures, car crashes etc
A trick to "learn" routes.. put the GPS in your pocket, and only listen to it... this way you start to spot the landmarks we used to use to navigate by.
Fun fact: If you use Google Maps, and press on the arrow (while the navigation is started), you can change the arrow to 3 different cars.
I hate this because I accidentally tap the arrow even when I am not pressing on it. For example, when I want to select a different route, I try to tap the gray alternate route because it is efficient for EV energy(mostly not highway), and the menu pops up for selecting vehicles. I don't think that is a good place for it to be. It is distracting and could be in the settings. Most don't even know it is there until it is accidentally pressed and cause the driver to become distracted.
I use Waze any time my wheels roll. In the Boston area there is a huge input of data for the quickest route from A to B.
Are we getting native advertisements on Lemmy now too?
Or do you just genuinely like it that much?
I'm not a bot, nor a paid promoter.
Using Waze has allowed me to dodge items on the road such as:
Mattress, wheelbarrow, couple of paint cans, large pieces of shredded truck tires... lots of other stuff.
I also like the road kill warnings. No one wants to drive over a skunk. That shit stinks!
When I'm traveling a lot I like to cool off with an ice cold Coca Cola™. It keeps me hydrated and refreshed so I can get to where I'm going safely!
you need GPS to go to the place youv'e been multiple times, because you have GPS. Your brain does a funny thing where it doesnt feel like it has to remember shit when you have the answer infront of you on a computer/phone/device cause it is basically using that device as its short term memory.
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Same with phone numbers. We used to remember them, or at least a handful of the most important ones.
Nowadays it took me years just to memorise my own.
yep. still remember my childhood home phonenumber cause i had to dial it so much.
cant remember my own cell number without opening my cell and looking at it.
Yeah, having the internet in my pocket absolutely affects how much I commit to memory.
Which is a good thing, at least for how my mind works- leaving it up to the internet to fill in the details frees up space in my head to retain a greater breadth of vague knowledge...
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It's like we can all match the most "erudite" that lives 50 years ago just by the fact we can access infinite knowledge at all times. At the end of the day those guys's work was to know where to look for information in their libraries, and have the surface knowledge to understand what they were reading about.
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It is problematic though. Having access to information is not the same as using it. We have kinda "outsourced" most of what was considered common knowledge back then. We think we don't have to remember a lot of "common knowledge" because we can just look it up. But how often do we actually look up that fact instead of just assuming something, even though that information can be accessed immediately?
If you think about it, it is most likely less often than you would have assumed, because it becomes a bother contintually having to look up facts in the middle of something. By having memorised a lot of common knowledge you can immediately incorporate that knowledge into your decisions, as they did back then, instead of having to pause your decisionmaking in order to look something up.
I remember routes even with GPS, and even better when you learn the roads. I usually only have GPS on for traffic data. On the other hand, I never remember phone numbers...
(It works conected to the odometer)
Also as "Smartwatch"
To avoid construction and traffic jams, they listened to the radio with the news of local traffic.
https://bitrebels.com/technology/this-is-the-first-gps-dated-back-in-the-early-1900s/
when my ancestors can find their way around a foreign country just as well as their home town, then I will accept criticism.
The only thing I use GPS for is to zoom in and see exit numbers before I get to them. I am a weirdo and when I go somewhere once, I am usually good to go.