My dad has installed an aftermarket compass in most of the cars I remember him owning and driving - but then, he doesn’t have the best sense of direction. It’s not so much that he would have sudden impulses to go nor’ by nor-wes’ over the open fields as much as knowing if he was headed east or headed west on an east-west road. He found it useful, although not as useful as my mom (who has an excellent sense of direction) riding shotgun with a map.
I travel up lots of logging roads headed for trailheads. A compass really comes in handy when trying to figure out which fork to take when no intersection appears on the map.
I remember my uncle telling me that in WWII, they were instructed to go at least 25 paces from their jeep before reading the compass, because the metal in the jeep body would distort the reading on the compass.
And they were told some horror stories about soldiers who forgot this, and got themselves majorly lost. Especially in the North Africa deserts, where being lost could be quickly deadly.
I don’t know if modern cars have enough metal in their body to mess up a magnetic compass, but I’d think it’s possible. There are aftermarket magnetic compasses that mount on the dashboard – I’ve seen them in use, and they seem pretty unreliable.
But to answer the basic OP question: cars don’t have compasses because most car buyers aren’t willing to pay a bit more to have one. If the demand was there from car buyers, compasses would be either standard equipment or an available option.
Exactly. We had several occassions last weekend (a trip to Wiltshire to see Stoneghenge, Avebury, etc) where we became a bit unsure of what road we were on, and when we came to an intersection where the intersecting road was the same name in both directions, we had no idea which way we should go. We had to double back on a couple of occassions when we got it wrong.
Now there is your mistake. If you are trying to get to Stonehenge, no road that you take will get you there.
If you are trying to avoid the stones, any way you choose will take you to the Henge.
Wiltshire is like that 
Si (who just got home from holiday, and spent too much frustrating time trying to get past Stonehenge on the A303, both ways. Grrrr)
ETA: you could just use the sun, remembering that at noon(ish), the sun is in the south, not the north. I had to remind my son of this last week, as we climbed Glastonbury Tor.
But naturally, this is England, and the yellow thing in the sky has not been gracing us with it’s presence much. But last week was pretty good.
For the same reason that hot water faucets don’t have thermometers.
Because it would be sensible.
So buy yourself one. They’re quite cheap.
Not around here they aren’t… they start at $500 for a TomTom One and go up from there. Hardly what I’d call “Cheap”, especially for what amounts to a talking road map.
$5
Computers are not mandatory!!!
:rolleyes:
Might want to try a reread.
Fortunately, the highway system has overpasses and offramps, and even more fortunately, cars have been built with steering wheels as a standard accessory since the beginning, so the above silly rant makes practically no sense.
As to the guess why more cars don’t have compasses? I hazard 2 guesses… first, navigation in a car is mainly road-based. A compass would only come in handy if you have strayed from a known route and you have a general idea that it’s somewhere to your east. Anyone who has ever driven in Atlanta with its sensible triangular layout of winding urban cow paths will be familiar with that sense of disorientation. Second, cars are made of metal and are surrounded by other cars, so it’s probably an engineering challenge to install a reliable compass in a car.
Trouble with using a compass in Wiltshire is all the ley lines messing it up.
I’d never thought about the usefulness of having one until now, but I’m going to see if I can pick up a cheap one somewhere. Those doubting whether it would have a function probably haven’t been in the position of the OP, of trying to find a way around unfamiliar winding country lanes (forget about grid systems or east-west highways!) And it won’t take long on a few familiar roads to work out if it’s reliable or not.
Yep, I’ve been in that position many times.
So?
Buy a $2 map & a $5 compass. It ain’t hard to use.
Coming from someone who was looking for an instruction manual for his mattress?
My 2004 Chevy has a digital one in the rear view mirror. I love it. It helps me take more back roads to try to get somewhere on the diagional of a route I normally only know as two straight lines.
As others have mentioned, some cars have compasses. A better question is why most cars don’t have compasses, and the obvious answer to that is that it’s not a very marketable feature. It is not a very marketable feature because most people who drive most cars are too fucking retarded* to use a compass.
(*I don’t mean literally too stupid to understand how to use a compass. However, that’s one more item to hold in their brain next to when to pick up the dry cleaning, how to double-click icons on their desktop and how to set their alarm clock)
Coming from somebody who makes maps for a living.
My car has a built-in digital compass and a thermometer (and the other things Johnny L.A. describes.) Not essential things, but nice touches. I can think of a few instances where if I had had a compass in my old car, I probably would not have turned the wrong direction. I’ve only had this car a couple of months, so time will tell.
I have seen add-on compasses in the automotive section at Target. They have both digital and analog.
I remember that my grandfather had a compass on his dashboard. This was probably in the early '80’s. It looked like the analog compasses that Target sells today–a plastic sphere with another plastic sphere with compass directions floating inside it.
I don’t know what the story behind all this is but now I’m terrified at the prospect that somebody who makes maps for a living was looking for an instruction manual for his mattress. It’s not maps I’d ever use, right?