"T i m" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 08 Feb 2016 09:12:56 +0000, Tim Streater
wrote:

In article , Vir
Campestris wrote:

On 05/02/2016 22:33, T i m wrote:
On Fri, 5 Feb 2016 21:21:57 +0000, Vir Campestris
wrote:
The main reason I bought a satnav was for my daily commute. I drive
into
a small city, and the traffic is a nightmare. One week I was given a
different route every day.

Sweet. And did it seem to pan out?

usually, but it's not infallible.

One day it took me on a five mile detour that ended back where I started
- because new jams appeared and old ones cleared.

Luxury.

There's a report in the Times today about a Yank tourist in Iceland who
mis-typed the street-name where his hotel was, after picking up the
hire car at the airport. 600 miles later, he gets to the place with the
road that he actually typed.

For the next leg of his trip he did the same again - another lengthy
detour. He was then reported to be leaving the island - and as the
Times put it: "it isn't known whether he found the airport".

This the point about using technology as an aid and not doing so blindly.

Or doing stuff as basic as looking at how far it says the destination is
away.

I do sometimes have the satnav offer me some place in america
instead of in my own country, particularly with very obscure
streets that aren't in any major town in my country or when
the one I wanted isnt even in the map database in my country
at all. Just had a couple the other day when google has just
fixed after I advised them of the error.

As I've said I keep my GPS set on 'North up' because I understand
maps and still can no matter which way I'm actually traveling. (It goes
into 'Track up' when it navigates you at junctions in any case). As it
happens, a GPS is better than a paper map there because if you did
prefer to use 'Track up' (where the world spins around your constant
'North' orientation) the place names still stay the right way up. ;-)

And shows you where you are on the map too.

So, if I set a destination and it displays the planned route, I check
to see if it's taking me in the direction I know I'm supposed to be
going in, the distance and ETA . If it doesn't look right I may have
selected the wrong 'Recently used' or postcode so I re-check before
further committing.

Course it could be argued that he's just a twerp.

I guess if you didn't know the country or area you could be fooled
into thinking the destination 600 miles away was the one that was
supposed to be only 60, especially if you haven't glanced at the
map previously or don't try to make sense of stuff like that.

Unlikely that you would actually want to go to a hotel 600 miles
from the airport even if someone had managed to book a room
in a hotel 600 miles from the airport by accident.