GPS can be helpful during commute to avoid trafic and accidents. Also it can help find faster route that aren't necessarily obvious even if you've been to the place 20 times.
this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
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I used to have an amazing sense of direction, could read a map, and wouldn't even need it half the time. Going out of state for a concert? Pssh, we'll just wing it. Always got where I was going.
Ever since I got my first smartphone with GPS, I feel like I need it just to cross the street.
It could be age as well.
If only. lol. I was in my 20s. It was definitely GPS that ruined me and made me second guess everything.
I have huge respect for my parents being able to plan a roadtrip through Europe in the 80s.
Going thousands of km., different currencies, languages and stil being able to show up at the hotel on the hour of check-in. They didn't even have printed routes, like I had in my younger days. They'd just drive by signs, a dated map and lots of planning.
I for one don't miss the unnecessary detours as international maps would only show major roads and cities (which weren't necessarily the fastest or most convenient route), navigating around new roads that the map didn't know about, the arguing / guessing between driver and passenger whether or not it'd be correct to take this unexpected exit coming up very quickly, driving around a town until you find someone to ask for directions in a foreign language, finding a phone booth to call your destination and ask for directions, making a wrong turn in a big city and finding yourself in a maze of one-way roads with no way to turn around, not even knowing where you are to begin with... yes, not to mention that "real-time traffic information" meant listening to the radio in a foreign language to get a vague idea of which areas you might want to avoid (though no mention of how you'd do that).
I for one salute our satellite-wielding overlords and am prepared to follow them blindly most of the time.
Neurons in your brain be like, use it or lose it.
It's because infrastructure has gotten so damn complicated to keep up with capitalism and growth of the economy. Things aren't simple anymore. You can't just turn right. You have to get into the third lane on the right hand side of the road but not too early because then you'll get off on an exit.
i mean i suppose you're technically correct, but the answer is more fundamentally that cars are absolutely terrible as a mode of transport, and anything else is much easier to navigate with.
you need like 5 cars to create traffic, with pedestrians it takes hundreds of people in a limited space to do so.
My ancestors are totally judging me over the fact that I have lived here 30 years and there's still one particular area that I can't navigate through without help. It's this circular one-way route. Pre-GPS, I'd sometimes have to go around it 2 or 3 times before being able to escape. At this point, I've just accepted that I literally cannot correctly process this location. Might be something wrong with my brain, might equally be something wrong with the location. It does give off some eldritch vibes.
If it makes you feel any better, our ancestors probably also had no concept of one way streets or complex traffic laws.
That's a good point!
I still use maps even on familiar routes so it can divert me in case of unforseen events like accidents or road closures.
This right here. Traffic is a shit show in my city, my usual route could add 20+ minutes if there's an accident or lane closure, so I always check before I leave.
I always use it because the speedometer on my car shows way too much and is analog and I prefer a digital speedometer and that's available in the GPS. Also live traffic updates is a must in my city unles you want to get stuck for 30 minuts extra.
Yeh I'll GPS a 10 minute drive because I do not need unknown construction making it a 40 minute crawl!
and people wonder why i don't want to drive lmao, fucking insane
Well they only visited the place twice since they had to take a carriage.
If it is sufficiently distant enough, the GPS may find a faster route around traffic jams.
wait they see everything
Is there a privacy filter? Do they see every every family member at once or do they get to choose? I have so many questions about how this works..
Yeah, well, we have antibiotics and smartphones and the internet. Suck it, ancestors!
I use it sometimes to find out which path is estimated to be the fastest if I know multiple ways there.
Without GPS I know how to get there but I'd tend to pick a way and stick with it, which might cause me to get there slower due to traffic or a roadblock.
One time when a major cellular carrier went completely offline which rendered many people's phone navigators useless, I found it was busier than normal on the main highway. I suspected it was because people all took the familiar highway route instead of via local streets when navigating home that day.
I almost never use gps but that's mainly because my car doesn't have it and I have no mount for my phone. GPS on a phone in a cup holder is not ideal. I just drive in the direction I think stuff is in, usually works out
For that GTA Feeling!
Driving somewhere with GPS definitely seems to engage the brain in a different way than driving there without GPS. If I'm driving somewhere once and don't expect to drive there again, I'll use GPS every time, but if I'm driving to a familiar area or trying make an area more familiar, I'll try to go without it when I can.
As a cab driver this comes up most often with regular customers. I'll drive them home with GPS a few times, but once I notice that I'm going to the same destination regularly I'll try to get there without it. One or two goes of getting directed there by a person instead of by my phone and I can usually drive straight back.
If I keep using GPS I could drive there dozens of times and still not immediately recall where it is.
I call it the "Google Effect". If you know you can find information you need by typing "a certain phrase" into a Google search engine...your brain will "encode" those steps; often linking back on your other skills like using a computer and accessing Google.
TL;DR: You didn't learn how to drive there. You learned how to type a piece of information into a piece of technology to get your answer.
Unless you force yourself to learn the route somehow; you'll never learn it.