Is there such a thing yet as a satnav where you can tell it not to go that way? For example it takes you on a road you know is closed at a certain point. Mine only lets me say "there's a road block in 1 mile, 2 miles, 3 miles etc, it's not easy to just say "don't take that road". If it was a human you'd just say "avoid the A68" etc.
On my TomTom App for the smart phone I can set the destination and let it select a route of its own.
Then go back into the menu, select "current route", then "Avoid part of the route". I'm presented with the complete route where I could find, by scrolling through the list, the A68 and tell it to avoid.
This cannot be done safely whilst driving so it has to be performed before you start or you must pull-over whilst travelling.
On Sat, 07 Oct 2017 23:37:23 +0100, alan_m wrot= e:
I hate Tomtom, they charge =A360 to update the map!
That sounds good.
Although what really annoys me about mine is I can only select "fastest"= or "shortest" route. Fastest often takes me on a motorway which gains = me about 1 minute in time, but adds 20 miles to the journey, costing pet= rol. Shortest takes me on silly little farm roads which are much slower= than it thinks (it assumes 60mph limit so 60mph average speed), or even= gated off! What I usually end up doing is telling it to give me the "f= astest" route, having a quick glance at the map of the whole route, and = if it's stupidly long, I just drive straight across the bendy part until= it realises I should take another route.
Unless you're one of the 99% of people who can multitask.
-- =
Mary had a little sheep She took it to her bed to sleep Mary found it was a ram Mary had a little lamb.
Be happy you're not in the US. There have been several incidents where the GPS 'shortcut' was an unmaintained seasonal road that headed off into an area with no services, no people, and no cellular service.
Kim was apparently using maps and not a GPS but it's often the same sort of situation. I've been across that stretch from Grants Pass to Gold Beach. In the summer. With plenty of gas. The Rogue River is a popular rafting river which makes the route even more deceiving. It's a good, paved road up to the launch area. Then it all turns to shit with a maze of mostly unmarked dirt roads that are good for about 20 mph. Trust me, even you would be doing 20 and it has nothing to do with a posted speed limit since there isn't one.
I sometimes play along with the GPS just for fun. The last time I passed through Las Vegas it routed me on surface streets for a while. The route was shorter than the interstate but it also was a tour of the part of LV where you don't want to be. There were 222 homicides in 2016 and 2017 has been keeping pace, and that's discounting the recent mass murders.
otoh, it has gotten me to places where it wasn't readily apparent how to get there.
Ah, Top Gear doesn't exaggerate then. They make fun of America quite a = lot.
You'd think the satnav makers would take account of these things.
-- =
If you own a =A33,000 machine gun and a =A35,000 rocket launcher, but yo= u can't afford shoes, you may be a Muslim.
James Wilkinson Sword wrote
Yes, most when you setup a new nav, will offer a route and will allow you to select an alternative if you don't like one that is offered. Wont actually tell you not to go that way if you choose to drive that way ignoring the satnav instructions tho, most modern ones just recalculate the new route and continue to route you to the destination you originally specified.
point. Mine only lets me say "there's a road block in 1 mile, 2 miles,
3 miles etc, it's not easy to just say "don't take that road".You can do that with minor dirt tracks, toll roads etc with most satnavs but that's telling it to not use those at all.
Not anymore. They now have lifetime maps, but they can often decide that your TomTom has come to the end of its life and so there are no more maps at any price for you and you need to buy a new one, if you are that stupid.
Most have more choice than that, like no tollroads and no minor roads when its possible to avoid using any of those.
A few do allow you to specify cheapest, particularly with tolls and calculate the extra cost of the fuel when avoiding tolls.
Ours do allow you to specify no unsealed roads.
Google maps shows you the alternatives and you are free to inspect the map it shows you and decide for yourself that particular routes arent of any interest because of the way they go etc and even use street view to see what they are like in reality if you like.
You can do that when setting up the initial route with google maps.
And drag the route offered around too if you prefer the views visible in street view if you want to too.
Or in your case, see where the sheep are so you can f*ck them on the way.
Not a problem, we need more Darwinian selection to get rid of the most stupid.
GIGO. The data is usually decent for urban areas but it's often years behind in rural areas. There is a bridge a little downstream from me. It was closed for vehicular traffic around thirty years ago and washed out completely perhaps twenty years ago. It took a while for the information to trickle down. A new bridge was built about the sametime the old one was closed and that took a while to make it to the maps, either digital or paper.
For better or worse Google has spent billions on their map products, as had ESRI and other players. There is also the OpenStreetMap project that started in Britain and uses the Wikipedia model of the data being provided by volunteers. Unlike Wiki, there is little falsification or editing based on an agenda.
There is big money in GIS these days.
As far as some of the shortest routes, the problem with digitized data is the seasonal factors are hard to quantify. right now the snow level here is around 5000'. An unmaintained road that goes over a 6000' pass may or may not be useable. User discretion is required but that can be in short supply.
There is that.
A turkey votes for Christmas.
Hardly ever anymore with the best of them like google maps.
We had a major intersection in a rural area shut down completely when it was completely rebuilt. Google maps always knew about that and knew about it reopening on the day that it was reopened.
And responds so fast to reports of map errors that I have sometimes regretted not checking if they have done that soon enough, an hour or two after I have told them of the problem.
I did find that some clown had moved the Anglican Cathedral in our town to the slum at the back of a tiny little village a few miles from our town. They fixed that in hours of being told.
In Wales they are called main roads :)
Your motorway journey with the extra 20 miles probably costs you a LOT less in petrol than a stop/start country road journey taking the same amount of time, especially if you get stuck behind someone who cannot read the road ahead of them.
New Scientist this week suggests the real meaning of AI is Artificial Ignorance. Sounds about right to me. Brian
Brian Gaff wrote
That?s the fools actually stupid enough to buy the line about spontaneous human combustion.
No surprises there...
I doubt it. Consider these two routes:
To err is human, to really f*ck things up requires a computer.
Do you live in the valeees?
Am I correct in assuming you are in Britain? 'Rural' in the US can be a bit different. We have roads where you could safely pitch your tent in the middle of the path with no worries.
There are about 76,000 miles of road in this state alone and 54,000 of them are unpaved. Of those 54,000 some are in frequent use where others hardly ever see traffic. Even with the satellite views you can tell the area is not being updated frequently.
Google is good and has even started using man portable units for trails and other places not accessible to vehicles but they are not god-like.
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