> I liken this to asking people who don’t use a GPS how they drive and if they h...

zdw · 2024-12-25T03:18:45 1735096725

I agree - I had a traveling consulting/repair job before digital maps were a thing. Every year a 50 page city-wide street map book would come out, and you'd buy one every few years from Costco, as needed.

North was always up. I learned to navigate in that mindset and to this day maps that rotate based on direction facing (even in video games!) just don't match the mental model I have of driving.

GPS's gives you a single track view of how to solve a problem, when it's either advantageous or required to react differently (ex: road hazards, opportunistic turns if driving diagonally across a grid), and when you deviate from the single track it creates annoying noise, especially if the road names are not phonetic or in other languages.

pbalau · 2024-12-24T18:58:23 1735066703

There is a route I drive at least once a week. I can do it without GPS (in my case is Google maps via Android Connect).

Yet, every time I ignored the suggested deviations from the "standard" route, I ended up regretting it.

As an example, last time I was 2h late for a meeting because I ignored the "scenic route" suggested and ended up stuck behind a car crash.

mjrbrennan · 2024-12-29T03:23:38 1735442618

Yes I find this is the main benefit of Google Maps GPS now, predicting and avoiding traffic whenever possible.

bdangubic · 2024-12-29T03:25:09 1735442709

waze is far, far superior at that

mjrbrennan · 2024-12-31T02:41:50 1735612910

I thought Waze was owned by Google though? I assumed they would use Waze’s traffic data.

bdangubic · 2024-12-31T02:51:25 1735613485

as crazy as it sounds - they don’t. you can open them side-by-side and you’ll often see much different routes.