My city used to print street names vertically on wooden posts. They were hard to read in residential areas and impossible to read while you were on a main road.
Ok, so I have a GPS. But I don’t keep it in my car all the time! I mostly just use GPS when I am going on a long trip, to somewhere I don’t know, because I don’t leave it in the car, and thus I need to take it with me everytime.
I’m talking about going to places you’ve been once before. So you kind of remember where they are. Or even places that are fairly easy. “Take Route 50 for three miles. Turn right at West Street.”
Do you guys really keep the GPS in your car all the time?
And maps are less than useless. Really, you have maps that tell you the minutaie of every city in your muncipality? And aren’t insane to manage? I actually do have a couple of maps in my car, for the two main cities I drive through. But I don’t really want to have to pull over and start peering at a map when all I need to know is is that intersection coming up, the one with the right-turn only lane, the one I need or not? Because I don’t want to get stuck in the right turn only lane if it isn’t, neither do I want to miss it.
Agree that GPS is the best option, but I simply can’t keep it in my car all the time…that’s a great recipe for losing it or whatever.
And! Someone else mentioned when they don’t even have a street sign! That pisses me off too!
I use the navigation on my phone all the time. I have Google Maps set up to “take me home” with one click. Even if I know, turn by turn, exactly how to get home, it is nice to just relax and be told where to go.
THANK YOU. Quoting in case it got lost in the thread.
I leave it in the car all the time, attached to the windshield almost all the time, though sometimes will take it down and place something over it to hide it. Never a problem. Turning on the key energized the lighter socket and turns it on. I have gotten quite used to it there continuously.
I don’t see how leaving it it the car will cause you to lose it, unless you are in the habit of losing your car, in which case, yeah the GPS will get lost with that.
If you are concerned about thief I would recommend an obviously older model, smaller screen, and very basic as that may be a less attractive target, but I have often parked in many places in and around NYC with that thing in full view, and also often leave my car unlocked in my driveway, again with the gps there, and never any issue.
Now if I did take it out of the car every time I would probably would have misplaced it a few times.
Now where did I leave my car keys…
See, now, I’ve had my car broken into in NYC, so I just don’t trust leaving anything remotely valuable in it. Even up here, in the safest part of the state, I don’t even leave my iPod uncovered. it’s just habit. I am frankly amazed whenever I see, for example, a wallet laying on the front seat. It’s just temptation!
I don’t have a smartphone (and probably never will). Nowadays I have a tablet, which is a big help, but I got it less than a month ago so am still mostly using it for fun and not usefulness (though I do use it for navigation). It’s a hand-me-down, so I’m not even sure if it talks directions.
Sorry to hear that, but yes I do understand. I have been trained since childhood to expect such things as you state and to take preventive action such as hiding & carrying the GPS, but in my own life, and rejecting the former training, I have found that this simply does not apply to me (and many other people as well).
A smartphone with mounting could provide the same thing, perhaps a solution will come along to solve your problem.
Good Luck
BTW where is the safest part of the state?
GPS isn’t infallible. Sometimes it helps to be able to see the street sign in case your GPS wants you to turn on the wrong road. For example, in my town there’s Tunnel Rd. and S Tunnel Rd. For whatever reason, even with updated maps, there are several GPS devices that want to have people make a turn on S Tunnel Rd. when the address they need is on plain Tunnel Rd. Being able to read the sign before you make the turn can help a lot.
I think there are many threads in which this quote could be used.
I don’t like smartphones and don’t have a need for them…all the “fun” stuff of it, the tablet takes care of. The rest…do you think I actually want to talk to people on the phone? Cellphone is 10x worse!
Thanks. As to the safest part of the state I exaggerate a little but my municipality was recently named as the safest municipality of its kind in the COUNTRY. So I kind of mashed it all together as a shorthand…really I do live in a very safe town though.
And yes, I meant to say earlier, GPS isn’t infallible. Plus it doesn’t always go where I want it to. A month ago I was driving from one small town to the next. I set the GPS and followed it and soon it became clear that it was taking me through both small towns. I wanted to go from one town to the highway, then to the other town, even though it was longer. Unfortunately there isn’t an option on my GPS to say “use major highways”. There is one that says “don’t use major highways”, go figure.
So true. But it’s just a subset of the even more numerous “why isn’t everybody like me?” whines.
Sometimes I just want to crawl through the screen and slap people. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean sometimes.
GPS’s seem to love interstates at least out here. If you know some of the route you want to take, just take it anyway the GPS will eventually figure out what you are doing. For example, I was taking a trip and wanted to go to a town on the major highway that runs straight south out of my town. The idiot GPS kept telling me to go to the interstate 20 miles to the east and then go back 20 miles west when I got near the town. After about 50 miles or so, it finally figured out what I was doing and calculated the correct route. Of course, if you don’t have a long way to go, that plan may backfire.
Yah, I usually do that. But this time, I wasn’t really familiar with the two towns. I figured it was taking me to the highway…but eventually I realized it was take me through some god-awful backroads.
Thankfully it was a beautiful sunny day, both towns in question were pretty, and I had nowhere to be urgently, so I just sighed and went with it.
It’s always fun to be driving along and all of a sudden the GPS starts bitching at you to return to the motorway or something and you look at it and it shows you driving over some big body of water with the road over to one side.
It isn’t really that street signs are so small, it’s that everything else is disproportionately large. If we made everything else a bit smaller, the street sign issue would fix itself. </science>
A GPS just does what it’s programed to - and it’s not perfect, though now some are adaptive and do lean driving styles and preferred routes and it’s getting better all the time. Like anything else one needs how to learn how to use the item with it’s flaws and know how to compensate for them.
But for reading street signs a heads up view (2D map view mode - all have this option) would seem like your best solution. Not even using the routing options, just the view of the map you are on with the street names. Many time I drive without using GPS routing, just gives me a overview (though I keep it on 3d view). Again the most basic and inexpensive model should be able to do that. Though I know you were concerned about possible thief if it is left in the car. Perhaps there is one that can be hidden, IDK.
Fuck that noise! If we are talking about what we want from science,
WHERE ARE MY MINIATURE ELEPHANTS???
I saw them in the animated movie The Croods. I wanted one so badly!