Because some people like to participate just because.
A common choice in such situations used to be “I hate all kinds of cheese but still wanted to vote in the poll!” but that has fallen out of favor lately.
That’s a good choice, and i appreciate it, but it doesn’t detract from the usefulness of “other”, since the poll-maker often neglects a cromulent option.
Huh. I didn’t even know cromulent was a variety of cheese. Learn something new every day!
“Well, we don’t get much call for Cromulent around here, sir.”
FYI
I’m an outlier, for other, or in addition to other, I miss the Bacon Hindu Atheist answer. Even though it’s almost never appropriate.
No, not every poll should contain the option “Other.” Sometimes, the whole point of a poll is to force people to choose between two options to see which they’d prefer. An “other” would make it meaningless.
If a Doper makes a poll asking “Would you rather Trump be president or Vance?” and it has an “other” option, then 90% of people would vote Other, imagining some hypothetical Kamala, Walz or Buttigieg presidency.
The maps poll could have used an ‘other’ option as my answer, “I just memorize the route and drive there”, was not available. 
Not to mention “You think my car is new enough to have a nav system? Cute!”
When I was taught to navigate in a scout helicopter we were told to orient the map (before GPS was a thing). Always held the map so the direction we were traveling was to the top of the map. I don’t know how else you could effectively navigate. Now I primarily use Waze and it’s the same. The map is oriented to the direction of travel.
Cars have had nav systems in them for 30 years – the earliest ones were not built into the car but mounted on the dash or something of the kind. You could have an Edsel with a nav system in it, if you felt so inclined.
Other, because I don’t know who By-Tor is, other than somebody who made a recent post.
By-Tor (Biter) is a dog’s name from a Rush song, right?
Voted “other” on the pain question because the option “I’m not in daily pain, so a pill which reduces 95% of nothing is meaningless” was not available.
Ask me again when I’m in pain.
That’s why i answered i would take it when i needed it. I’ve been in pain. I’d take that pill in a heartbeat. But I’m not in pain now, so i wouldn’t take it today, i don’t need it.
I struggled with the nav question. I use my phone for navigation. But it, too, gives a choice of “forwards up” or “north up”. And i couldn’t pick more than one answer.
(My car doesn’t have its own navigation system, so currently, my phone is the only option. But still, i choose a car that didn’t have it’s own navigation in part because I’m happy with Google maps.)
Oh, i usually orient with forwards up.
Yes. By-Tor fought with Snowdog
That’s an add-on, not part of the car, a Garmin Nuvi, Tom-tom Go or something similar…& they were not dedicated to the car as Garmin used to make a handlebar mount for the Nuvi so you could take it on bicycle rides; of course for only as long as the battery would hold out.
I still have one in my cars because I end up lots of rural places that don’t have cell service & don’t keep lots of offline maps stored on my phone. If you’re on a route, your phone will keep you going thru those cellless zones but if you do anything, including accidentally, to stop your trip good luck getting it to start up again w/o service.