What do you use to get you to a destination?

FiestaRed

FiestaRed

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I guess most of us travel to a wide variety of destinations and I just wondered what everyone on here uses to get there, maps, sat-navs, phones?

The reason I ask is I recently bought a new car and the on board sat-nav is a complete waste of time as it seems unable to find the most direct route to a location and always adds miles on to the journey. The car does have Apple Car Play and I'm thinking of using that but it doesn't store places like my old sat-nav used to do. Trying to find a post code from on load of different saved ones on a screen is going to be pretty difficult.
 
Depending on your satnav you may have different routing settings. Ie quickest or shortest. The quickest routes may be further by distance by bigger roads, hence quicker. It may just be down to crap mapping software used.

I had a Kia Sportage which I put a third party system into. The satnav was shocking. It would always take the shortest route even if that means singles lanes tracks or traversing small rivers.

I know Garmin systems have been known to have poor routing software but I’m told it’s improved somewhat. We often used to get delivery drivers complaining that their satnav tried to guide them down a footpath to our house! I’ve always found Tom Tom to be excellent.

I currently drive a Qashqai and it’s built in satnav is pretty good.
 
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ecoleman said:
The satnav was shocking. It would always take the shortest route even if that means singles lanes tracks or traversing small rivers.

.
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Mine does the opposite, it seems incapable of finding the most direct routes. When I first had the car I spent hours trying different settings but none of them made little or no difference. On two local routes, at the end of my street, the built in sat-nav actually takes me in the opposite direction to the one I know I should be taking. Having checked routes against Tomtom and Apple Car Play, the built in nav gives me no confidence at all that's it's not going to add miles to my journey.
 
I have a Garmin Nuvi 2569 with lifetime updates and traffic reports plus Bluetooth to the phone. Does a good job particularly re-routing around traffic delays if required.
 
Snowflake mode on...if you use your mobile phone as a Sat Nav and touch it you can be fined and get points on your licence
Snowflake mode off...

Strange but true. You can touch a Sat Nav, but not a phone being used as a Sat Nav. There's just been a court case about this and the driver lost. 6 points and a fine. Ugh.
 
Garmin nuvi. It finds the most direct route alright if you put it on the setting, taking you through the worst roads available if that is the most direct route.

Very annoying in rural wales, it takes you through filthy farm lanes and tight B roads
 
I use CoPilot GPS on my phone. It's the best sat nav I've used up to now
 
Road atlas and signs, memory and local knowledge plays a big part too.

Only just got a car with a sat nav, in fact first one that didn't have a cassette player, so used to old fashioned navigation.
It works, so don't feel the need to change just for the sake of it, no doubt someone will say I should though.
 
mickledore said:
Strange but true. You can touch a Sat Nav, but not a phone being used as a Sat Nav. There's just been a court case about this and the driver lost. 6 points and a fine. Ugh.
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Incorrect. You can use your OEM built in device whilst driving but if your Sat Nav is portable/removable you are subject to the same rules as a mobile phone; ie you can't adjust it unless parked up with the engine switched off.
 
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FiestaRed said:
Mine does the opposite, it seems incapable of finding the most direct routes. When I first had the car I spent hours trying different settings but none of them made little or no difference. On two local routes, at the end of my street, the built in sat-nav actually takes me in the opposite direction to the one I know I should be taking. Having checked routes against Tomtom and Apple Car Play, the built in nav gives me no confidence at all that's it's not going to add miles to my journey.
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I have always thought and said to others, if you use a Sat Nav you should not be a slave to it but have a concept/idea where you are going!

In regard to routing ~ most sat nav mappings will allow a choice of 'quickest' , 'shortest' and 'avoid tolls'.

The best i had was my Loox PDA loaded with Co Pilot, that allowed for loading up to 6 locations and would sort them into shortest overall journey distance.
 
I use a Sat Nav ( mediocre) , Map and common sense.
I had a Tom Tom which was not bad although even after map upgrades it still tried to send me the wrong way down a one way street, my in car Toyota is not much better, it just takes me off a motorway, round the island and back on the motorway
Close to me there is a road shown on Sat Nav , which appears to make sense as a route unfortunately its a farm track and the number of Artics ( usually foreign) who get stuck trying to get up is quite amazing
 
The sat nav on my BMW is rubbish so often end up using Google Maps on my phone. The Sat Nav on my Qashqai is pretty decent. Have no idea what map systems they use.

My other cars are too old to have sat nav built in.
 
DemiLion said:
Incorrect. You can use your OEM built in device whilst driving but if your Sat Nav is portable/removable you are subject to the same rules as a mobile phone; ie you can't adjust it unless parked up with the engine switched off.
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Can you give a link to that fact please.

Don't forget you can also be charged with Driving Without Due Care and Attention if touching the in-built device.
 
Route plan before setting off.. But if a long journey then use google maps on phone then I know in advance any moterway closure or problems...... a godsnd and betetr than trying to catch local radio travel reports :)
 
Generally make sure I know where I'm going, but also use Google/Windows navigation at times, especially when travelling abroad. Had a built-in sat nav in a peugeot in Spain a couple of years back, and it was generally very good, if a little slow sometimes.
 
Google maps on phone usually.

WAZE app on occasion in the past but ran the phone very hot.

Mondeo 2014 has a great satnav, Tiguan 2014 pretty poor in my experience.
 
Google Maps + Ordnance Survey paper maps or printouts.
 
I generally take a look online first then use a tomtom connected to their rds data service via fm radio.

I like a dedicated device so I can ignore phone/hands free as road conditions require.
I also keep an atlas on the backseat in case I need to find an alternative route.
 
Waze every time...

I have spent a lot of time driving from the east midlands to the north east over the last few years and the crowd-sourced traffic updates have saved me literally hours on some journeys when there has been major problems. You have to put your faith in it's sometimes weird and random re-routing but it hasn't let me down yet.
 
FiestaRed said:
I guess most of us travel to a wide variety of destinations and I just wondered what everyone on here uses to get there, maps, sat-navs, phones?

The reason I ask is I recently bought a new car and the on board sat-nav is a complete waste of time as it seems unable to find the most direct route to a location and always adds miles on to the journey. The car does have Apple Car Play and I'm thinking of using that but it doesn't store places like my old sat-nav used to do. Trying to find a post code from on load of different saved ones on a screen is going to be pretty difficult.
Click to expand...

Apple CarPlay does store locations. You do it on the phone though, then they are accessible through CarPlay.
 
I used to use a TomTom, but then moved to Google maps, but now I use Waze, which is fantastic.
 
Nawty said:
Google maps, miles better than any sat-nav I've used and way better than Apple Maps too which is really hit and miss.
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Who’d have thought TomTom (and other providers) could get it so wrong.
 
Since i could find no online comparison for the routing capabilities of the various apps i did a test a few months ago of the various satnav apps on the iPhone (after previously using waze and google maps). During this trial there was a major accident on the a470 and despite being closed for 3 hours many of the apps still routed me on that road, including google maps, waze, sygic and a couple of others that I cant remember. Google maps also missed a few temporary road closures that tomtom noted correctly.

Since then I have purchased tomtom (£30 odd for 3 years) - there are quite a few things i would want to change in the app but I have found the routing and traffic to be spot on, always recognising traffic accurately and routing accordingly. Strangely apple maps doesn't seem to do quite as good a job despite advertising that it uses tomtom for traffic data. I still have google maps on my phone as its search is second to none, also openstreetmap (maps.me) for when i'm on foot and have no signal.
 
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Giblets said:
Can you give a link to that fact please.

Don't forget you can also be charged with Driving Without Due Care and Attention if touching the in-built device.
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The relevant paragraphs are:


110.—(1) No person shall drive a motor vehicle on a road if he is using—

(a)a hand-held mobile telephone; or

(b)a hand-held device of a kind specified in paragraph (4).


(4) A device referred to in paragraphs (1)(b), (2)(b) and (3)(b) is a device, other than a two-way radio, which performs an interactive communication function by transmitting and receiving data.
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Given that a portable sat nav communicates with the relevant satellites to obtain live data, it wouldn't be too far a stretch for the police (and/or CPS) to consider them included in the legislation.
It's also worth mentioning that some portable sat navs can receive text messages!
 
I agree that GPS satnav is caught within the definition of communication equipment, but the key issue is "hand-held". If your portable Garmin or TomTom (or mobile phone based satnav) is attached to the vehicle by mount or cradle, then I can't see why this isn't as acceptable to use as an OEM installed device.
 
Ricardodaforce said:
Apple CarPlay does store locations. You do it on the phone though, then they are accessible through CarPlay.
Click to expand...

Thanks for all the replies, you are a varied lot. Google Maps seems to come out well.

Ricardo, as I mentioned, I was finding the location by using its post code and I can't see a way I can change the post code to a place name on my phone. Having a load of post codes stored on the phone gets quite complicated unless you can remember them all.
 
DemiLion said:
The relevant paragraphs are:




Given that a portable sat nav communicates with the relevant satellites to obtain live data, it wouldn't be too far a stretch for the police (and/or CPS) to consider them included in the legislation.
It's also worth mentioning that some portable sat navs can receive text messages!
Click to expand...

I am not aware of any portable sat nav devices (or fixed ones for that matter) that actually transmit data. Granted they do receive data but then so do car radios and I don't think they fall under the (very poorly written) legislation.
 
Of course it transmits data. How else does it receive the traffic updates relevant to the locality?
 
mickledore said:
Snowflake mode on...if you use your mobile phone as a Sat Nav and touch it you can be fined and get points on your licence
Snowflake mode off...

Strange but true. You can touch a Sat Nav, but not a phone being used as a Sat Nav. There's just been a court case about this and the driver lost. 6 points and a fine. Ugh.
Click to expand...
In a fixed mount it should be ok.
 
Giblets said:
I am not aware of any portable sat nav devices (or fixed ones for that matter) that actually transmit data. Granted they do receive data but then so do car radios and I don't think they fall under the (very poorly written) legislation.
Click to expand...
My Tom Tom will transmit if you add a speed camera location.
 
DemiLion said:
Of course it transmits data. How else does it receive the traffic updates relevant to the locality?
Click to expand...

I think you need to read up on how traffic data is collected for transmission to the various systems that we use be they fixed sat navs, portable sat navs or mobile phones. Sat navs DO NOT transmit. The traffic data that the sat navs receive comes from the mobile phone networks together with the systems operated by the Highways Depts.
 
I use a TomTom device with either my own POIs or those downloadable from PocketGPSworld - I am a subscriber but no other affiliation.

If I am going somewhere non-standard I need to be better at checking Google Street View / Google Maps in advance and then programming destination, as Sat Navs are very good at getting you close to a destination but not always exactly there.

Also always have a paper road atlas in the car, just because you never know......
 
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