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Just a load of random thoughts and stuff i've been up to, probably not worth reading...Friday, January 19, 2007
Why I'm still going to keep a map in my boot....
Ok, I may like driving and I may be obsessed with anything gadget-like, but traveling yesterday was certainly not fun and I partly blame technology...
I was on a grad course down in Bracknell, which we got down to fine and stayed the night before and the night in-between - Although, the least time spent in Bracknell the better...
Anyway.
When we came to drive back yesterday, however, we had slightly more problem! What with the weather issues, the fact we left at half four and just generally the fact that we were in the vicinity of London.
We initially tried to use Steve's Sat Nav to find the quickest route, which it was absolutely sure was via the M25 - hmmm since when is any route via the M25 going to be quick?
Once we got on the M4 we soon realised this was a very very stupid idea, as all the signs said heavy congestion (judging by the news, I think congestion wasn't quite the word..) for the entire circle of the M25, so we thought we'd try the "shortest" route on the Sat Nav instead, taking us off onto backroads.... And I wasn't joking either when I meant backroads...
The problem with things like Sat Nav's is, if you say shortest route, to that it means the nearest route it can get to "as the crow flies". So it tried to take us down god knows what single lane track roads and country lanes, which of course, due to the weather, were all either blocked with tree's or flooded!
Eventually after some "gentle persuasion" we managed to stop it telling us to "Perform a U-turn" as we'd had to do enough of that ourselves to avoid all the tree-blocked roads which the Sat Nav insisted on trying to keep sending us back down!
Five hours later, via Aylesbury, Milton Keynes and god knows where, we finally got back to Nottingham!
So yeah, I may have been all praise for Sat Nav's previously and I still think it's worth it's weight in gold, most of the time. But just goes to prove you can't always rely on technology! If we'd had a map we might have got back in four hours, maybe...
The problem is, the routing software on them needs to vastly improve. To start with they are not intelligent enough to work out the difference between turning round because you can't / don't want to go one way, and making a genuine mistake. So you end up with the bloody thing trying to take you back the way you've just been for half an hour, until it works out you're not going to give in! They also need to have some way of letting you pick a different route if the one it originally decided on is no good i.e. an accident etc. This is probably available on the ones that you pay a subscription for to get traffic updates, but I can't see why it couldn't be a feature of all of them. There's always more than one way to get somewhere!
Perhaps they should start selling Sat Nav's with a free Atlas thrown in...
I was on a grad course down in Bracknell, which we got down to fine and stayed the night before and the night in-between - Although, the least time spent in Bracknell the better...
Anyway.
When we came to drive back yesterday, however, we had slightly more problem! What with the weather issues, the fact we left at half four and just generally the fact that we were in the vicinity of London.
We initially tried to use Steve's Sat Nav to find the quickest route, which it was absolutely sure was via the M25 - hmmm since when is any route via the M25 going to be quick?
Once we got on the M4 we soon realised this was a very very stupid idea, as all the signs said heavy congestion (judging by the news, I think congestion wasn't quite the word..) for the entire circle of the M25, so we thought we'd try the "shortest" route on the Sat Nav instead, taking us off onto backroads.... And I wasn't joking either when I meant backroads...
The problem with things like Sat Nav's is, if you say shortest route, to that it means the nearest route it can get to "as the crow flies". So it tried to take us down god knows what single lane track roads and country lanes, which of course, due to the weather, were all either blocked with tree's or flooded!
Eventually after some "gentle persuasion" we managed to stop it telling us to "Perform a U-turn" as we'd had to do enough of that ourselves to avoid all the tree-blocked roads which the Sat Nav insisted on trying to keep sending us back down!
Five hours later, via Aylesbury, Milton Keynes and god knows where, we finally got back to Nottingham!
So yeah, I may have been all praise for Sat Nav's previously and I still think it's worth it's weight in gold, most of the time. But just goes to prove you can't always rely on technology! If we'd had a map we might have got back in four hours, maybe...
The problem is, the routing software on them needs to vastly improve. To start with they are not intelligent enough to work out the difference between turning round because you can't / don't want to go one way, and making a genuine mistake. So you end up with the bloody thing trying to take you back the way you've just been for half an hour, until it works out you're not going to give in! They also need to have some way of letting you pick a different route if the one it originally decided on is no good i.e. an accident etc. This is probably available on the ones that you pay a subscription for to get traffic updates, but I can't see why it couldn't be a feature of all of them. There's always more than one way to get somewhere!
Perhaps they should start selling Sat Nav's with a free Atlas thrown in...
Labels: Random rants, Work
posted by Adam @ 3:58 PM 
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