Sat nav?

Does anyone really need sat nav - cage or bike? I think they are the biggest load of ******** ever and in most cases downright dangerous.

Guy came to buy my old CBR a wee while ago. Phones me up, asks address, says don't worry mate I'll use the sat nav and find you. So armed with my postcode the guy sets off. I'm waiting and waiting and waiting. Then 3/4 of an hour later the guy phones and says he can't find me. Asks him where he is and he's 16 miles away!!!! Admitedly I stay in the country but he was only 7 miles away to begin with.

I mean FFS what happened to checking a map and following road signs?

Discuss

GPS works great. It's the numpties driving/riding/programming the SatNav that you want to worry about!!

When some people came to buy my 50cc they put the postcode in and it told them I lived in the middle of a field just up the road?!?!?

I managed to get to York the other day without even looking at a map, I didn't even decide where I was goin until I got to the humber bridge! I don't have a brilliant sense of direction but I managed with just road signs.

Also, if you're just one a ride/drive I think getting lost and 'exploring' adds to the fun. Though I wasn't thinking that when I was lost in a giant housing estate somewhere in Derbyshire!

Their trump card is finding you places in strange cities and when you're shagged out and tired after working till 2am in the middle of nowhere you just push the go home button and follow the voices (as usual lol).

Originally Posted by arenalife

Their trump card is finding you places in strange cities and when you're shagged out and tired after working till 2am in the middle of nowhere you just push the go home button and follow the voices (as usual lol).

Yeah I like that about my navman. It has fouled up a couple of times but in 99per cent of the time it's spot on! When I'm on my bike I stick it in my jacket and listen through the earpiece. Great!

Need it? Yep, for sure, definitely, me. Navigational ability of a gold fish. If i've not got any time constraints then sure, I'll happily bumble around and eventually find the place. If I need to be someplace at a certain time though then I tend to get quite stressy; sat nav removes that entire stress process (and also stops me fumbling for maps collecting grannies and cyclists in my radiator as I go). The stress removal thing is a *huge, huge* benefit to me (and by virtue, to other road users too). It's transformed my driving from "oh crap I need to be on the other side of the country at 9:00am tomorrow and I've no feckin idea what they did to their one way system" to "off to someplace in shropshire tomorrow" - it was really something I panicked about the night before, and during the drive, and now it's purely a regular drive and I can turn my limited attention span to cyclists, grannies and BMW drivers.

[timwilky]

Best thing ever invented

My lad is a tiler, he is at a different address every day. 99% of time he can simply find the location from a post code. And if that fails he phones the customer to find out how to get there the day before.


I used to travel the North West for work. I had to carry A-Zs of most towns round here and it was a right pain in the neck.

Yes we can all navigate say Manchester to London. But then how to get to that certain street in Chelsea etc is where sat nav comes into its own.

What I like best about my Satnav is that I get advanced warning of problems and can plan my way round well in advance.

[TEC]

Originally Posted by stuartyboy

Does anyone really need sat nav

Nope no-one really needs one but

I mean FFS what happened to checking a map and following road signs?

Middle of the night, you have no idea where you are to start with (cause of the wrong turn 20 miles back) and its pi$$ing down with rain

Think you can guess the option I would rather have now

Am old fashioned in the fact I love maps, sit the night before study where I am going and if I get lost well always got a spare road map under my seat. Also I live in the south west of scotland if there is a road about I dont know I have yet to find it. Also got a local street map for finding stuff about Glasgow.

I dont like sat nav too distracting for my likeing

The anti-GPS sentiment of a lot of people really gets on my nerves.

Yes, if you use them badly/follow them blindly/place them where they obscure your view of the road etc. they can be dangerous. All of those things are dangerous/poor driving/riding though. Likewise, if taking one means people don't bother to carry a map/compass (or learn to use them) as well, for if the GPS is playing up/conks out, it's a bad thing. None of this is the GPS' fault. I think a lot of this feeling stems from people viewing them as toys/gadgets and just a novelty that no one actually needs. Well, I do need one.

As part of my job I ride and sometimes (and if something is wrong with my bike/I've flown to a nearby airport) drive, all over the country. Whilst my knowledge of the motorway network is now good enough that I can get from my house to pretty much any decent sized city without consulting a map. Likewise, I can ride home from anywhere (apart from perhaps northern scotland) simply by following signs to the nearest motorway/road name I recognise then going from there. Where it does come in handy, however, is riding to a client's site or hotel, that I have never been to before (which is common - at least twice a month, usually more). Often, I'll just turn the GPS on when I get near the destination (so much so that I've still not bothered to wire the power cable for into my bike- the battery life is always longer than I need). Effectively, using it as a localised A-Z. Buying A-Z maps for the whole of the UK is more expensive than a gps btw. Cities are difficult to navigate, even with a map. London, if you have tried it, is very difficult. Few places to stop to check a map/ask for directions (unless you're naughty and bump your bike up the kerb, not really an option in a car). Similarly, relying on local's knowledge is very patchy. It's surprising quite how many people don't drive (at least near their own town centres) and will try to send you down one way streets/out of the end of a bollarded-off side street, etc. Also, most people are pretty rubbish at giving directions and usually don't admit they don't know how to get somewhere. In my pre GPS days I used to follow Clarkson's advice; (paraphrasing) "If they don't immediately reel off a concise list of directions, they don't know where it is. Listen whilst smiling politely, thank them, then ask the next person you come across."
Then there's the hassle of turning off your engine and taking of your lid to speak to people. There's also the fact that whilst I get "travelling time" for going out to jobs, I still have to do some travelling in my own time. Invariably, it's on your own time you get lost/can't find the hotel. It was 45 minutes spent riding around hartlepool at 10.00pm looking for my hotel, after a 6 hour ride that finally made me buy a GPS. Over the weeks/months this time added up. There's also the fact that if you're not riding for work, every mile ridden unneccesarily due to being lost is costing you money and wear and tear/depreciation on your bike. No problem if you're having fun in the wilderness, a rather bitter thought if you're riding around Bradford.

Then there's the bonus of GPS- being able to program in scenic routes to go for nice rides, or setting it to navigate somewhere via the shortest (as opposed to quickest) route. See here:

for the fun that leads to.
http://forums.sv650.org/showthread.php?t=91241

Also, being able to say "Navigate to nearest petrol station" has saved me on at least one occasion (the other it was 50:50 if I'd of made it without it) from running out of fuel when out in the wilds of wales.

Don't get me started on the neccessity of it on my trip to America where I drove and rode 2500+ miles and their road signs are "a bit lacking" to say the least.

Edit: I forgot to mention - I can read maps and use a compass (I'm a scout leader and actually teach other people to). I always check my route the day before. I always carry maps for the areas I'm travelling to (as well as a localised a-z map resolution one of the area I'm going to on my laptop) and I'm hoping to add a decent quality car/bike compass to my dash in the near future. Sat nav is a navigational aid (and used correctly, a very good one), not a substitute for planning/map reading.