Is Your Sat Nav As Helpful As It Thinks It Is?

[AB Editor]

 

This poll is closed.

Is your sat nav as useful as it could be while driving? What is the most important thing that could be improved?

• Yes, it's perfectly fine! - 72 votes
• 51%
• I would like my sat nav to give better lane and merging information - 41 votes
• 29%
• I would like my sat nav to give me more time to react - 19 votes
• 13%
• It could get me closer to my destination - 10 votes
• 7%

See final stats

Stats until: 05:04 Tue 31st Dec 2024 (Refreshed every 5 minutes)

© AnswerBank Ltd 2000 - 2024. All Rights Reserved.

[RATTER15]

I get on well with mine, the only problem I have is the touch screen can temperamental. (TomTom)

[Old_Geezer]

I don't believe that they think Ed. Unless AI has come a long way recently. ;-)

[Old_Geezer]

The most important thing is that it could be a newer model.

I just wish it didn't note I'd followed it's instructions precisely and then pretend I didn't by saying, "next opportunity..."

It'd help if it didn't keep trying to get me to go back to the closed motorway I've just been forced to leave too. There needs to be a button that says, "That's not an option, fool, why do you calculate I left it ? Find the next best route".

[Baldric]

No problem with mine, aged Tom Tom updated annually, which I attach to top O/S corner of W/screen as I prefer it there to the built in one in centre of dashboard.
If I set it properly I get exactly what I want.

[andy-hughes]

Speaking as someone who can walk into a hotel, use the facilities, and then be unable to find my way back to the reception, I think the Sat Nav is the greatest invention ever.

It may not get me absolutely where I need to be every single time, but given the alternative, it is always going to be a thousand times nearer than I would get without it!

[Quoi]

To improve - make it cheaper to update the built in to the car ones - mine is out of date cos it costs too much to update it.

[ToraToraTora]

it's mostly fine but it does have a fit if a road is unexpectedly closed and it thinks it isn't so it keeps trying to take me back to the road in question. I have to just ignore it and drive until it gives up and plans another route.

[Buenchico]

Despite being one of first people in the country to drive a vehicle with SatNav (even before the emergency services got them) at a press launch, I've never owned or found the need for SatNav.

I prefer a combination of good old paper road atlases and route plans from the AA website (or Google, etc).

[THECORBYLOON]

I used the satnav to get somewhere, arrived no problem then set it to go home. It telt me to take four right turns and then telt me I had reached my destination, which was where I had been sixty seconds before...

[Baldric]

Can be hard to read when you're driving though Chris.

[SpikeyBush]

Absolute rubbish. Bought one a few years ago, hardly used it. Need to have a rough idea of where you're going so you twig if it goes off on a tangent, in which case paper maps and finding your way the old method is a necessary skill. Updates were so slow to reflect changes it was annoying being told to drive the wrong way down one-way streets or down a slipway into the river Avon. Give me a compass and an Ordnance Survey map any day.

[ladyalex]

Having a satnav has changed my life.
I can now drive stress-free to anywhere.

I have no sense of direction at all and can lose my way on roads that I have travelled many hundreds of times. I'm not too bad with maps, but you cannot map read and drive simultaneously.
Now I just put in the post code and drive off happy in the knowledge that I will arrive at my destination. Previously I would have been wandering round without a clue as to where I was.
I see I have a fellow sufferer in Andy Hughes.....people who do not have this affliction have no idea how bad it is. They think we are putting it on, don't want to get to wherever we are going for whatever reason..not so.
And don't get me started on following durections given by helpful people....they NEVER give accurate directions...for some reason some roads do not cou t, so second right can mean third on the right because the first road o the right is too small to count....how am I supposed to know that?
Sorry....private grief there leading to a rant....
Anyway, satnavs are great.

[Answerprancer]

I voted "I would like my sat nav to give me more time to react" because it was the nearest to what I actually think, which is "I would like my sat nav to react (refresh) faster than it does". I have a fairly old TomTom and it often screws me up, particularly on roundabouts where the refresh rate is just too slow and jerky for me to work out where my exit is in time.

My biggest gripe however is this:
Why why oh effin' why is there not a "road" choice in the "travel via/avoid part of route" option????

[mastercraft]

My Sat Nav is useless. I was in a toilet the other day and I asked it for direction....
Still missed the pan!

[CrapAtCryptics]

perfectly fine as long as you do your updates regularly.

[waterboatman]

Mine is fine. It just needs updating. There is a complete new road system down here that is not on there. A job to do when I get home.

[mikey4444]

I have been using one for years and to be honest, I am not sure how I would manage without one now. Driving around in a strange area, with one hand on an A-Z, and the other on the steering wheel is the quickest way to have an accident.

Ruddy marvelous things !

[Postdog]

Not so much of the old, eh bathplug!

[Postdog]

Whoops

[EDDIE51]

I never use one, how the hell do you think we found our way around before there were any sat navs?