A30, B4077, M50 go!

[hirez]

(Inspired by well-wrought fulmination elsewhere.)

In-car navigation kit that uses GPS as a locator is still pish.

It'll remain pish until two interconnected problems are solved.

i) The mapping data has to be the OS. There are no other maps but OS maps (modulo Nicholson Streetfinder for those trapped within the M25 forcefield) because they show you where the road stops being a road, where the 1-in-3 hills are and where to find a pleasant riverside pub. (Usually next to a pleasant river)

ii) The voice-in-the-box is not a middle-aged man. It doesn't know the best way of getting to Yeovil from Bristol. Sure, it can have a stab at calculating it, but it doesn't effing know. It can have the voice of Cleese, Kitt or Clarkson and it's still going to point you down a lane that peters out into scrub after the cattle-grid.

I believe that the crucial test for GPS-located navigation is the ability to orbit Cheltenham in the opposite direction to the one-way system. (Or indeed any medium-sized town that's been cursed with urban 'planning' of the T. Dan Smith school)[1] Until that time, the things are as much a curiosity as a memo-taking biro or a calculator watch.

There is a technique for navigating country roads and it involves having lived in the area for a long time, keeping a shit old car, turning your lights off when approaching junctions (obv, if the other chap does that too, hilarity ensues. Ensure your passengers are relaxed by feeding them strong ale) and most important, diving for the hedgerow as a reflex. Getting the tracking fixed is cheaper than a new front end. The standard townie practice of screeching to a halt in the middle of the road Will Not Help and Will Cause An Accident.


[1] The bottom end of the M32 in Bristol was bad enough. Now it's far worse. It beggars belief that the slack-jawed fuckwits were allowed to get away with something that looks like the sodding trench from the Death Star surrounded by shopping canyons. I know that retro is big business, but is sixties fag-end neo-brutalism really a hip and happening thing? Bod help us all if so.

With any luck, the current crisis in the development and retail sectors will make them all Very Sorry. Bastards.

Comments

[reddragdiva]

Indeed.

[mattydesade.livejournal.com]

I have an old Garmin GPS which seems generally a bit more intelligent than the newer systems - prolly cos Garmin were there first.

I also have Memory Map on me moby which shows me where I am on an OS map.

Which leads me to
http://www.memory-map.co.uk/road_angel_adventurer_satnav.htm

That kinda what you're looking for? :-)

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Quite. My (ancient, obv) Garmin GPSIII has a rudimentary map, but all the map datums in the world.

I think they're different tools, though.

[aoakley.livejournal.com]

w0rd.

I quickly became very annoyed with Nokia Maps (not least, inability to differentiate between 4-digit and 6-digit postcodes in rural areas, and the fact that voice navigation is a subscription service costing 50 quid a year) and got Garmin Mobile XT (http://www.garmin.com/mobile/mobilext/).

The Garmin front-end is sluggish on my Nokia N95, but it is a whole class above both Nokia Maps and TomTom. Simple things like the option to avoid ALL minor roads, unless your destination happens to be at the end of a minor cul-de-sac.

I've always been a massive fan of OS maps, but for the purposes of directing the wife when I'm not sitting next to her in the car, it works well. I'll see how well it does in France in September.

[perlmonger.livejournal.com]

Quite so.

I resent nearly running into numpties who haven't the faintest clue where they are or where they're going on my painstakingly discovered backroutes around Somerset, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire. If they appreciated what Jane and her merry crew had given them I wouldn't mind quite as much, but they just trundle along blindly, letting Coldplay and their aircon wash over their disconnected, vacant selves.

If only more of them ended up shooting off the ends of jetties into 100' of reservoir water, or into the fragrant, moist depths of silage barns.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

I was thinking about it some more this AM and I believe I firmly agree.

A map, a destination and some mostly-unknown territory is a challenge and a vast amount of fun, given the correct mindset. The process of (mentally) nailing the map to the territory connects a fellow to the landscape.

(Mind you, in some moods what one really wants is a quick car, Propaganda up load on the wireless (Jewelled, from the Wishful Thinking LP) and Charlie Croker as your co-driver.)

On the other other hand, I hate strange towns. That's about the only time I'd feel I wasn't de-skilling myself by using a voice-in-the-box.