NY wrote
Tim Streater wrote

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.

There was a report the other year of a chauffeur-driven limousine taking
some people to a football match at Stamford Bridge stadium (Fulham's
ground in London). The chauffeur's satnav directed him to the town of
Stamford Bridge in East Yorkshire. And the mistake was only discovered
when he got there and the football ground was nowhere in sight.

I'm not sure whose fault it was. Should the chauffeur have noticed when he
programmed the satnav that it was a long way from where he was starting,
and queried with his passengers? Should the passengers have thought "We've
been on the A1 for a couple of hours - this doesn't seem right" and got
him to turn round?

When I use a satnav I always first glance at the intended route and the
distance/time estimates to make sure that they are sensible.

I normally just look at the map of the destination if I had hit the search
button instead of selecting from the list of destinations that pops up
as you type the destination in with the state and country included.

Whether it's a long journey or a fairly local one, I would never just set
off;

I do that sometimes when setting up a nav using voice commands
because not only can't I see the screen when I do that, the phone is
in the bin under the radio where the screen isnt visible, I dont want
to take my eyes of the road in that situation even if the screen was
visible to check something like that. Too dangerous.

But siri does add the town, so if you tell it to go to Jones St,
it will say 'getting directions to Jones St, Whoop Whoop' etc.

I'm often curious about "I wonder which way it will take me".

Yeah, I am too, mainly an academic interest in how well it does that.

When I know a better route when actually following the turn by
turn instructions, I just go the way I know is better and have the
satnav reroute automatically after I have diverted from what it
suggested I do route wise.

In other words, I have a fairly good idea of how to get to my destination

While I do most of the time and normally only use the satnav
to get to a particular house on the street with the garage sales
and when I am picking up something I have just bought in one
of the facebook buy sell swap groups or ebay etc, it isnt always
true when in some other town that I haven't been in much before.

but use the satnav to make sure I don't miss any crucial junctions

Yeah, particularly when I know one has been completely
rebuilt and moved recently and isnt yet fully engraved in
my mind because I haven't been thru it often enough yet.

Or where I know that the road thru a particular town
is quite complicated and easy to miss the correct turn.

and as a time/distance countdown ("ah, I'm now 10 miles / 10 minutes from
journey's end").

Yeah, that recent change with google maps is quite
handy. It now announces the ETA which is very handy
if you have setup the nav with a voice command and
haven't been able to check the map because you are
driving.