GPS
I have reconfirmed that I dislike using GPS for driving directions. Tonight was the end-of-conference BBQ at the organizer's house in NJ. It was only a half hour drive from my parents', but into a part of NJ I wasn't familiar with. I looked at Google Maps and wrote down directions of a fairly simple route which was only 5 minutes longer than the optimal one. Then my parents offered to lend me their GPS for the trip, "so you don't have to look at the paper for directions". Well, GPS is still somewhat distracting because you're looking at it to see the map, especially because the awful language producer pronounces things so garbledly that "Ottawa Ave" sounded like "Mill Ave" to me. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I agreed to have the GPS to guide me for the last stretch of the trip out there and also so I wouldn't have to look at written reverse directions when it was dark on the trip back to my parents'.
So, problems occured in both directions. Outbound, I followed my route, which took me due south along Route 21 to and through downtown Newark. I kept ignoring the GPS' plaintive suggestions of switching over to the Garden State Parkway, a toll road. But then as I'm driving through Newark, it suggests turning onto a regular city street. I zoom out and see the route does not venture to the GSP, but instead cuts right across to the professor's town. "If it's suggesting this route over going just a little further south and taking I-78, it must be a faster route," I thought, especially since it was set to a highway-heavy route. Well, the route took me through the absolute most rundown part of Newark, which admittedly is not something the GPS would know. What it would know is that this route was so heavily beset with traffic lights that at times I would literally hit three lights in a row, wait through all of them and advance only a couple hundred feet. How it could have estimated this as a quicker route than the highway is beyond me. It literally added 15 minutes onto my travel time.
On the way home, I decided to just let it guide me onto the Garden State Parkway, which it did fairly okay. Once I get to familiar territory, I ignore it since I knew the route home. That is, I ignored it until it suggested something completely stupid: I was on a main road that I only had to follow for 4 miles before turning on my parents' street and going two blocks. What does the GPS say? Turn onto the nearest highway and go due west, which would then force me to backtrack onto the road that I was already on! It made absolutely no sense.
So, I continue my opinion that GPS is fine if you're lost and want to get back onto a particular road, or you want to follow with a map as you're going along. But in terms of actually guiding you somewhere, I'm more content with looking at a map myself before setting out on the trip.
So, problems occured in both directions. Outbound, I followed my route, which took me due south along Route 21 to and through downtown Newark. I kept ignoring the GPS' plaintive suggestions of switching over to the Garden State Parkway, a toll road. But then as I'm driving through Newark, it suggests turning onto a regular city street. I zoom out and see the route does not venture to the GSP, but instead cuts right across to the professor's town. "If it's suggesting this route over going just a little further south and taking I-78, it must be a faster route," I thought, especially since it was set to a highway-heavy route. Well, the route took me through the absolute most rundown part of Newark, which admittedly is not something the GPS would know. What it would know is that this route was so heavily beset with traffic lights that at times I would literally hit three lights in a row, wait through all of them and advance only a couple hundred feet. How it could have estimated this as a quicker route than the highway is beyond me. It literally added 15 minutes onto my travel time.
On the way home, I decided to just let it guide me onto the Garden State Parkway, which it did fairly okay. Once I get to familiar territory, I ignore it since I knew the route home. That is, I ignored it until it suggested something completely stupid: I was on a main road that I only had to follow for 4 miles before turning on my parents' street and going two blocks. What does the GPS say? Turn onto the nearest highway and go due west, which would then force me to backtrack onto the road that I was already on! It made absolutely no sense.
So, I continue my opinion that GPS is fine if you're lost and want to get back onto a particular road, or you want to follow with a map as you're going along. But in terms of actually guiding you somewhere, I'm more content with looking at a map myself before setting out on the trip.