That reminds me of a commercial from long ago. I don’t remember what was being advertised, but one part of it was a driver who had asked for directions from a couple of African-American girls and they were both yelling at him simultaneously their markedly different ways of getting there. They both yelled “And then you take a right/left!” while he flailed helplessly.
I use GPS (specifically Waze) to get everywhere, but a year ago I found myself in a part of the country where GPS was blocked, and I managed. There are still signs, after all.
Just makes me think of this bit from Mr. Show.
People show up here sometimes because they got lost doing what their GPS told them to do.
It’s a potentially useful tool. It’s not perfection.
But then, I used to sometimes enjoy getting lost. For a while in the 70’s before the gas prices jumped, some friends and I made a game out of it. We got to see a lot of places we’d never have seen otherwise that way.
Absolutely. When we were vacationing in Tennessee a few years ago, we were trying to make our way through some of the Rocky Mountains on old, steep dirt roads through some extremely remote areas, and at one point there was a huge hand-made sign that said:
TURN AROUND
GOOGLE MAPS IS WRONG
It was funny but the sign was right.
Anyway, GPS definitely makes mistakes, but for every time it screws up it has helped me dozens of times to get around traffic problems or find some place I’d probably never find using a map.
(Emphasis mine.)
I think I see why you got lost.
Shoulda taken that left turn at Albuquerque.
Smoky Mountains. Smoky. Gah.
Due to all the smoke, some folks’ ideas of where they are get a little rocky. Could happen to anyone. Really. 
Well, there is good ol’ Rockytop, Tennessee!
I love to just navigate by Seat O’ Pants: “Hmmm, Vincennes is south and east of here, so if I keep the sun on my right, I’ll get close. And go through some quaint towns…”
But one time I said “Okay, Google Maps, here’s your chance. I’m going to take every cockamamie turn you tell me to.” Within an hour, it told me to get off I-94 onto a small county road, then back toward the interstate and along a frontage road (WTF?). As I did so, I realized there’d been an accident and I was passing dozens of cars. My new friend Google had me rejoin the highway after the masses were all done Looky-Loo’ing.
I have a terminally bad sense of direction. I even managed to get lost in my own dorm in college. I have no sense of how things are oriented directionally - I’ve worked at my agency for ten years and still have trouble remembering whether it’s east or west of my home. I don’t seem to remember how to get to places, either, except via careful step by step direction and if I make a wrong turn I may never come back.
In 2008 we moved to New Jersey and I bought a TomTom GPS for that occasion, not realizing how vital it would be to my survival. Oh glorious day! New Jersey roads and their corresponding traffic are something to behold. Accidentally drive past the building you’re looking for? Well you’re going to have to drive around two fucking cloverleafs to get back to it and it’s gonna take about ten minutes. GPS gave me a fighting chance.
I honestly would just have a much harder time if not for GPS. I find driving stressful but it would be so much worse without it.
My Aunt is extremely good at navigating. She knows where she is at all times and if she’s been to a place once that’s all it takes for her to put it on her mental map. We were once in Chicago and she became genuinely lost. Since this was a rare occurrence for her, she became a little panicked. “I don’t know where I am!"
I shrugged and said, "That’s like my default state of existence.”
Many years ago I was visiting a friend living in Paris and one evening we walked multiple blocks away to eat at a pleasant little restaurant. As we walked out the door afterwards, I turned right; she turned left. We stopped, turned to look at each other.
Her: It’s this way.
Me: No, it’s this way.
Her: But I live here!
Me: But I have a sense of direction.
So we went my way, and I was correct.
The one and only time Google Maps ever did that for me mid-trip, it asked me for permission to find a better route, so I knew why it was sending me off the interstate. This was back in 2017 when I drove cross-country to see the eclipse.
For some reason when going to our Vet clinic from the north Google maps insists the correct route is to drive through the intersection and park in the lot of the strip mall next door. There is no easy footpath between the two.
On Eclipse Day 2024 we navigated via a combination of internet GPS and paper maps. Where the older method really comes in handy is when you have massive movements of people leading to traffic jams and bottlenecks where being able to travel more obscure/indirect routes can be an advantage. But those sorts of situations don’t come up very often. For every day travel I don’t think it makes a difference which navigation method you use.
I had a similar experience with Waze. I usually have it on, because of the useful information it provides like stopped vehicles and the like. Often when driving to a known location, I will turn on the routing so that I can give a reasonable ETA to the people I am meeting. This one time I was telling me to get off the interstate, and I was confused, because having gone that way for years, it did not make any sense, but we had time, so I did and then I saw, like you, traffic backed up on the interstate as we drove on a parallel road. I am glad I was alerted in time to get off at an exit before we got stuck in traffic with no way off for miles.
//i\\
Of course, now we have the “Waze Effect”, where the alternate route becomes clogged with Waze-directed traffic and is slower than the slowdown being avoided…
I remember that happening when people would take local roads instead of the clogged main road and those living along those local roads were annoyed by the traffic driving through their neighborhoods. I think some places banned cross traffic through these routes or installed speed bumps to discourage this sort of thing.
Edited to add, here is an NPR story about this happening in a New Jersey town.
Which is controlled by the Waze And Memes Committee.