Getting to Walks

[Roger]

I actually went for a short walk on Thursday, the first outing since October, so I thought I would bore you all with a trip report. Then I thought why bother? No one ever comments on my reports these days so I thought I would whinge about my current in-car Sat Nav instead and then pose a question.

Now the whinge. I usually set the Sat Nav these days just in case I get lost ignoring its time consuming short cuts. Thursday's destination was the minor road between Fountains Fell and Pen-y-Ghent and and predictably the Sat Nav tried to lead me off the A65 even before I entered Gargrave. The A65 had a set of temporary traffic lights before the Settle turnoff which must have cost me at least a couple of minutes and rush hour traffic prevented any overtaking but even so I arrived at my destination just 5 minutes after the pre Gargrave ETA.

On the way back with plenty of time to spare I thought I might as well see how stupid the programmers at Garmin had been and followed the Sat Nav directions. Apart from the 9 minutes the ETA receded before I finally reached the A65 again I was also treated to 2 junctions where there were no verbal directions and the sun made viewing the screen impossible. Now the first of those junctions was at an acute angle to a major road (almost an oxymoron when applied to a minor country lane) and the way on seemed obvious but the second was the opposite way round and I followed the major road while the Sat Nav had expected me to go straight on onto an even more minor road rather than bearing left.

And now the question - are there any in-car unitsother than the highly unsatisfactory Garmins that take grid references or some other easy way of specifying a destination in the middle of nowhere? I am absolutely fed up with having to second guess my current nuvi every time it directs me down a single track road.

[John Rumm]

My old TomTom GO700 will let you specify destinations using an address, postcode, a remembered favourite, a point indicated on its map, and a latitude+longitude grid reference.

Having said that, being able to spec the destination (for for that matter "via" points) using grid refs does not prevent it routing you somewhere you would rather not go.

[Jules]

Getting lost is the best way of finding the really interesting stuff, IME :-)

[Clot]

I've got the same toy with the same faults, ( I bought it for the the hands free phone facility as much as anything else.). The most amusing one for me local to home. If coming off the motorway, it sends me off at the third exit to the roundabout5 rather than the first and outlines a route that must be at least a couple of miles longer and uses similar grade roads. If I ignore, which is always the best for SWMBO'd, she becomes all petulant and goes off recalculating. "Continue on existing route 0.8 miles to roundabout" Bollox to that, I'm turning right at the trafficlights just ahead. She doesn't recognise these for some reason though they have been there for the best part of ten years.

I have to say, that when I do this and she realises that I have made a smart move she avoids going into "Recalculating" mode and silently shows me the next part of the route. Immediately prior to home, she ignores one road to the left as far too trivial to advise me about, assuming I know that and I should be turning left at the second junction. We are almost there, passed the school and the church and she tells me to turn right. Oh silly woman, that's a turn too early. So yet again I ignore her and do my own thing: she starts the "Recalculating" routine and then realises we are there, cutting herself off in mid word and going into arrival routine.

Having travelled extensively over the country for many years without her, I do not fall into the traps.

To be fair, there was one weekend recently when the police had completely closed off the A55 after an accident, where I knew full well the direction and roughly the roads to use but was not 100% confident having not used them for close on 40 years when she was spot-on.

One of my kids has TomTom. He also has no geographic sense either. Currently living in the NW - Manchester way the TomTom rightfully told him to head south on the M6. At the Stoke junction, which is the logical turnoff to get to Leics., the junction was blocked. TomTom told him to go down to the new(ish) M6 by-pass and turn east skipping the shorter and more logical route along the A5.

Another son has a friend living in Salop. That lad's SatNav told him how to get to our address carefully avoiding the logical direct route, sending him down the M54, M6, M42 and then cut across to Leics. It didn't even recognise that the M6 Toll Road existed. Additional mileage must have been circa 30 on a roughly 100 mile route.

Doncha just luv 'em?

PS I get the feeling that they are much of a much - we'll see....

[www.GymRatZ.co.uk]

Absolutely ! I usd to have one of those £1.99 ball compas things in my car as a service engineer. (before affordable GPS days)

Look at a map, get a vague idea as to the direction I ultimately wanted to (Noth, Noth/west, West etc) Drive for an hour and if I felt lost then look for where I was on the map and another rough bearing and head off again.

:¬)

Makes me laugh when I see people firing up their sat nav's to go to work and back !

[John Rumm]

You do realise that many of them have route preference options... so if you say you really like motorways, are not so fond of A roads, and hate B roads they will quite often go out of your way to avoid the obvious in favour of your stated preferences...

[tony sayer]

Do they teach -anyone- how to read a map these days?...

[Roger]

Thanks for the input folks but actually I intended the message for uk.rec.walking so don't be surprised if those who frequent both groups see it turning up there later. I appreciate the depth of experience in this ng but wanting to drive to somewhere that hasn't a name or postcode is very much a minority interest.

[Frank Erskine]

Do you mean lat+longitude, or NGR?

My TomTom GO710 won't (AFAIK) deal with NGR, which is why I had to get a proper GPS receiver (which of course also shows tracks and other features which a SatNav doesn't). I frequently walk disused railway tracks.

[Bruce]

My TomTom will accept a lat/long position and guide you to the nearest road, but I suspect it has most of the same weaknesses as other SatNav systems. The devil is in the detail - the mapping is often poor and is usually responsible for the silliest errors, some of which can be quite dangerous.

I am thoroughly fed up of being diverted down single track roads with grass growing in between two tarmac wheel tracks, only to find that they save a few tens of metres over using a 60 mph A or B road and therefore waste many minutes. And this is in the Chilterns - hardly a remote and sparsely populated area.

[Roger]

The message from John Rumm contains these words:

My unit has 2 main preferences - fastest and shortest. Unfortunately it appears that those clever clogs at Garmin have no idea of the difference between single track and single carriageway roads. From the way in which the ETA recedes into the distance it appears to me that they have a target average of 40 mph for single track roads which might be ok for some of the long straight roads in Northern Scotland (assuming they haven't been upgraded to dual carriageways since I was last there) but for twisty lanes with high banks or hedges 40 mph is the height of absurdity and even a 20 mph average would often be optimistic.

[Roger]

The message from Bruce contains these words:

Tom-Tom claim to be the best so if they can't deal with single track roads it looks as if I am stuck with what I have got and must review every route before I set off so I know where to ignore the directions.

Lat/long is a bit of a pain. You can't just read it off a map like a grid reference.

[Roger]

The message from tony sayer contains these words:

I doubt if it is in the National Curriculum and in any case a hand held gps removes the need to know anything about navigation particularly if used in conjunction with a mobile phone. :-)

I however am a hill walker of the old school having spent some 40 years relying on map and compass work (often alone and often as not in poor visibility) before surrendering to temptation and buying a handheld gps. I haven't as yet left the stone age completely behind as I still lack that other modern essential, a mobile phone.

[Bruce]

If TomTom is the best, I dread to think what the worst is like. I have crawled at 10-15 mph up narrow, single track lanes with the sump guard on my car scraping the gravel in the centre of the road just to save a couple of hundred metres that would have been on a first class A road.

I have two TomTom systems, one on a PDA and one standalone. The software versions are slightly different and there are some inconsistencies between the directions they give. But both have made the same potentially dangerous errors at the same locations.

I almost bought my partner a cheap Medion system for £49 but was warned off by a friend who had one and threw it into a river as a result of the sheer frustration it caused him. ;-)

That's true. But if it is somewhere you go regularly, on your first trip you can save the GPS position as a Favourite and easily call it up for all future visits.

[John Rumm]

lat+longitude...

More to the point, the sat nave GPS will always try to map you onto a known road if it can. Hence if you are but off road but close to one it will assume that you are on the road, and it has just got a measurement error.

[Harry Bloomfield]

Bruce formulated on Saturday :

I have both TomTom and Garmin. Both do make mistakes sometimes really major ones, but I find my Garmin makes fewer and is the better/ more reliable of the two and often takes me right to the door.

My Garmin has made two spectacular errors in the four years I have had it. It once took me down a farm track, which ended in a disused and impassable pack horse bridge and more recently took me down a back street to the gates of a locked scrap yard backing onto a canal. It seemed to think I could go through the scrap yard and there was a none existent bridge over the canal.

The TomTom often has me going around in repeated circles several times.

[dennis]

Do you set it to use the shortest route? It does state that it may take roads you might not want to use on that setting. I use quickest route and it seldom uses any single track roads. It does tend to want to use motorways a lot though.

[andrew]

s'funny I walk the used ones ;-) AJH

[Bruce]

I must admit I would like to try a different brand because I am fed up with TomTom's inconsistencies. For the top brand SatNav it really isn't as good as it should be. Even of another brand has a similar number of problems, I could forgive that because I sense a degree of arrogance and complacency at TomTom that I find disturbing in the light of so many elementary errors.

Faulty mapping is no longer an excuse because TomTom bought the mapping company (TeleAtlas?) in 2008 so it is all now in-house.

The worst of the many errors I have found occurred when approaching a roundabout at which I needed to turn right. It was foggy with about

40-50 yards visibility.

TomTom directed me to turn right about 70 yards before the roundabout; the turn was clearly shown on the unit's map. But that right turn was actually a protected left turn lane for traffic coming the other way down the road I intended to exit into. It is therefore one way in the other direction. TomTom expected me to cross a lane of oncoming traffic and proceed the wrong way up this one way protected turn lane.

Fortunately I has made this turn before and remembered just in time to go to the roundabout and take the third exit. I was so shocked by TomTom's error that I went back three times to check TomTom's directions. On each of the four occasions, the instructions were precisely the same.

There are many minor irritations such as getting wrong the number of exits from a roundabout, and being asked to "cross the roundabout" when what is clearly needed is a "go left on the roundabout" or a "go right on the roundabout". There are also some terrible inconsistencies when a major road turns left or right at a junction with another road; sometimes TomTom stays quiet and on other occasions it instructs a left or right turn when all you are doing is following a main road.

There is a system for TomTom users to report inconsistencies and these updates can be loaded onto your SatNav using the TomTom Home software on your home PC. But there is a great leap of faith involved in accepting some or all of the modifications suggested by amateurs, when what is needed is for TomTom to employ people to check out these inconsistencies and errors on the ground.

So I might try Garmin next time. As the No.2 in the market they must surely have to try harder than the No.1. I hope. ;-)

[dennis]

8<

Its a computer.. unless you edited the map it will produce the same output. At least its easy to edit a simple error like that. It is somewhat harder to add a new road.