4 ms·

Spend a few minutes looking at a map before the trip?

by SamReidHughes 8y ago

gjs278 8y ago
road closed. detours. insane levels of traffic you didn't anticipate. have fun.
- themoat 8y ago
  This comment kind of reads like the lead-in to a bad infomercial. It's not that dramatic.
- huntie 8y ago
  None of these are problems with proper planning. I usually add an hour for every three hours of driving as a buffer. It's worth noting that GPS doesn't solve this either. If there's an accident a few miles ahead of you that blocks the road you run into the same problem.
- hawski 8y ago
  I had twice in a short time span a closed road that Google Maps did not know anything about. It was useless, because it constantly routed me to the closed segment of the road. I had to manually select some far away point to finally get it to ignore the road almost completely, because I did not know how much of it was closed. One was on a German side of a major highway connecting Germany and Poland. The other on Berlin's main highway. It was after midnight so it was a challenge, but it probably was a scheduled maintenance.
timrichard 8y ago
Got to say, that's my preferred method as a public transport user/pedestrian in London who sometimes goes to unfamiliar parts of town. A few minutes with the map beforehand and the help of a button compass (Suunto Clipper is my favourite), and I seem to get to the destination very easily when a few street names and bearings are committed to memory. I used to get to the destination station, and would wait for the phone to get a reliable connection to download the map tiles... then the dodgy phone "compass"/magnetometer needed calibration, so wave it in a figure eight for a while, try to reconcile surroundings with arrow that keeps flipping direction, etc. I get on much better with "south out of station, left onto X street, right onto Y street, final left onto Z street, then watch out for that building eyeballed on Google Streetview earlier".
perl4ever 8y ago
You can even just go by street signs and general directions sometimes. I don't know if I have any paper maps any more. Plus, you know, reading maps while driving is probably as dangerous as texting. The other day, I left home intending to go to a hospital near where I live. As I usually do, I plugged my phone into my car and tried to tell it to navigate there. But for some reason it hung while trying to contact Google to locate the address. So I rebooted my phone, and rebooted my car, to no avail. Eventually I gave up, and based on the general knowledge that the hospital was to the south east, took one of the main roads through the city east, until I saw the first of several blue "H" signs directing me to the hospital. My car has an electronic compass as well, if I didn't know which way was east/south.

Spend a few minutes looking at a map before the trip?

gjs278 8y ago

road closed. detours. insane levels of traffic you didn't anticipate. have fun.

themoat 8y ago
This comment kind of reads like the lead-in to a bad infomercial. It's not that dramatic.
huntie 8y ago
None of these are problems with proper planning. I usually add an hour for every three hours of driving as a buffer. It's worth noting that GPS doesn't solve this either. If there's an accident a few miles ahead of you that blocks the road you run into the same problem.
hawski 8y ago
I had twice in a short time span a closed road that Google Maps did not know anything about. It was useless, because it constantly routed me to the closed segment of the road. I had to manually select some far away point to finally get it to ignore the road almost completely, because I did not know how much of it was closed. One was on a German side of a major highway connecting Germany and Poland. The other on Berlin's main highway. It was after midnight so it was a challenge, but it probably was a scheduled maintenance.

timrichard 8y ago

Got to say, that's my preferred method as a public transport user/pedestrian in London who sometimes goes to unfamiliar parts of town. A few minutes with the map beforehand and the help of a button compass (Suunto Clipper is my favourite), and I seem to get to the destination very easily when a few street names and bearings are committed to memory. I used to get to the destination station, and would wait for the phone to get a reliable connection to download the map tiles... then the dodgy phone "compass"/magnetometer needed calibration, so wave it in a figure eight for a while, try to reconcile surroundings with arrow that keeps flipping direction, etc. I get on much better with "south out of station, left onto X street, right onto Y street, final left onto Z street, then watch out for that building eyeballed on Google Streetview earlier".

perl4ever 8y ago

You can even just go by street signs and general directions sometimes. I don't know if I have any paper maps any more. Plus, you know, reading maps while driving is probably as dangerous as texting. The other day, I left home intending to go to a hospital near where I live. As I usually do, I plugged my phone into my car and tried to tell it to navigate there. But for some reason it hung while trying to contact Google to locate the address. So I rebooted my phone, and rebooted my car, to no avail. Eventually I gave up, and based on the general knowledge that the hospital was to the south east, took one of the main roads through the city east, until I saw the first of several blue "H" signs directing me to the hospital. My car has an electronic compass as well, if I didn't know which way was east/south.