OT Sat Nav

[ARWadsworth]

Nursie told him.

[dennis]

No need, its obvious. Tyres wear out at the edges when they are low pressure and in the centre when high pressure. I will leave it to you to work out why.

[Ron Lowe]

Oh dear, How sad. Never mind.

[Ron Lowe]

Sounds like you just learned 2 things:

1) The back roads are nicer ( but slower ); 2) GPS is a great tool to tell you where you *are*, but much less good at telling you where you *need to be*.

You need to learn how to use a GPS. I suggest a RYA Day Skipper course.

It's not just a matter of saying " take me to X... GO.". That's the major error.

YOU need to lok at the maps and decide on the route you want to take, and compare it to the GPS suggested route. If it disagrees, look and see why.

You can't totally assume the GPS mapping is 100%.

[Nick Leverton]

[ or Doppler radar based readings from the road etc. ]

Sounds interestin, what were you doing for that, John ?

Nick

[dennis]

You can't assume printed maps are OK either. A roads are usually OK but you can expect one ways and turn restrictions to be frequently wrong or not even shown.

[Ron Lowe]

Intentionally causing a collision is both illegal and reprehensible.

If you do that, I hope you get caught and sentenced appropriately.

Today, I was on a 2-lane North-bound motorway. Both lanes were full, and travelling at slightly different speeds.

I was in the outside lane, doing around 75, keeping a constant safe distance from the guy in front. The LH lane had slower-moving things with perhaps 200M spacings between them.

Behind me, I had an A-Hole up my bumper with flashing lights.

Excuse me. I'm in the RH lane because I'm currently overtaking a line of traffic in the LH lane, and I'm going as fast as I can due to the vehicle in front of me.

Do you really expect me to pull over to allow you to be 1 vehicle further forward in the same queue we were both in?

If I'm in the RH lane, and have finished overtaking, then I will pull back in. Untill then, back off and make a safe distance.

Asshole.

[Huge]

Speed enforcement in the UK has precious little to do with justice.

[Ron Lowe]

Yes, but that can't be a justification for abdicating all resonsibility for routing to the GPS.

[Mike Lane]

The Medway Handyman wrote on Aug 27, 2011:

Not all sat navs are like this. I use two Garmin gps units regularly, a hand-held unit for walking and an auto unit for the car. The hand-held uses two AA cells and will last for at least 15 hours on a pair of alkalines - so in effect two or three days of actual use. The auto unit runs on an internal lithium battery and will run for about two hours out of the car.

I think the difference is that the display in the auto unit is designed to have maximum visibility in bright sunlight and therefore uses far more power than the hand-held. I don't find this any kind of problem since I wouldn't think of using it out of the car for any length of time. The internal battery is just useful so that it doesn't lose satellite contact if you switch off briefly or stall the engine.

[Roger Chapman]

Not often that I agree with Dennis but he is right about Tomtom which is generally very good (at least compared with Garmin). The closest I have come to getting into trouble with a TT was when it directed me down a track that went from tarmac to dirt. Since it was downhill and raining cats and dogs I declined to continue but it was probably passable as was (on another occasion) the 6' 6" wide packhorse bridge that might not have been had I had a larger car.

I had previously had a Garmin which was for ever diverting me onto single track roads that might have been shorter but were indisputably more time consuming. The basic problem with the Garmin was that the retards who coded each length of road for duration were not aware that you cannot drive safely at anywhere near the same speed on a winding single track road as you can on a single carriageway. IIRC ETAs tended to be tight even on fast roads. On single track roads they were criminally insane.

[Ron Lowe]

Hah! We need mirrors on the bezel, like the AVO-8.

THen we can see how many crashes are caused by people trying to line up the lines on the speedo!

[ARWadsworth]

I know, and I really could not care less.

You can hope, but to date I have got away with it.

I'll put back in the bit you snipped

"The ones I nudge are on a clear highway and they believe that they are doing 50mph (their speedo tells them) and they move over to stop you overtaking them as they want to act like policemen.

These are not people who are incompetent and have just not looked in the mirror for the last 5 miles, they are deliberately blocking you and move out of an empty lane to do so when they see you approaching"

Do you see the difference between the situation you were in and the one I was in?

You were on a busy motorway, I was on a nearly empty motorway. You did not pull out infront of someone to police their speed, you were going with the flow of traffic.

I also have the advantage of not giving a flying f*ck if two cars are smashed up if I decide to ram into a wanker. My favourite was the guy that burst into tears when I took off the side of his car of because he tried to cut me up and he had only owned the the car 2 days.

And if you ever want to play dodgems on the road with me, then just ask.

[Ron Lowe]

Yebbut...

5 hrs is a bit crap really...

[Ron Lowe]

Whilst I may sympathise with your reasons, in the UK the sentence for motoring infractions is not death. We don't have the death penalty here for any crimes.

However, you seem to be prepared to impose it ( possibly on innocent by-standers ) by deliberate collision.

[ARWadsworth]

Yep, I am.

And I believe that I have already said I could not care less/give a flying f*ck.

[Ron Lowe]

Even for the family with young kids travelling on the opposite carrigeway, about to be wiped out by your maneouver?

You still don't give a shit? Is that really your position?

[Tim Watts]

Don't talk to me about 1 way systems. The dobbers in Camden Council are apparantly in the process of changing the direction of Shorts Gardens, off Drury Lane - cunningly making it really difficult to cycle back to Charing Cross Station. It is basically making all the one way side streets oppose each other as they cross Endell St.

Unless they have a cycle lane contra flow - but Shorts Gdns is a bit narrow for that. Pillocks...

[Ron Lowe]

Right.

And that just re-emphasises what I said:

GPS can tell you where you are, but it can't tell you where you need to be.

It can try to, but it depends on the mapping, and how recent it is.

Garmin 2012 mapping still does not have road changes that are several years old here.

[dennis]

You can edit tomtom maps in the unit. Adding roads is the one thing you can't do. Changing turn restrictions, street names, speed limits, adding/deleting islands, changing one way streets is quite easy.