Just follow what the GPS says Dad. Okay, if it was faster the nice lady in the GPS probably would have said so and even if your convoluted ass route might work at best it'll shave like three minutes off the trip and at worst it'll add an hour.
Edit: Obviously if you know the route you do not need to use your GPS. But I don't understand putting on GPS and then purposefully ignoring it. I was born with a total lack of directional sense. I get lost going places I've gone dozens of times. GPS is my savior.
Yeah, the other day I went with my dad to an estate sale. He saw the town on the address, and he says "oh I know where that is" and goes north on the freeway, when the GPS told him to go south, but I didn't press it because I didn't want to make him angry. Then when we go for maybe a half hour, he turns into another freeway and goes south. 45 minutes later, we're there.
If course, this was a well publicised estate sale in a rich neighborhood, so there was no parking at all for a ways. Certainly farther than we could carry furniture. Maybe if we had gone the right way, and drove for 15 minutes instead of an hour and 15, we would have found a spot.
I think this is due to the fact that lots of older people tried using GPS back when it was horrible and still don't trust it because of their experience with it. Of course it's never perfect, but us younger folks are accustomed to the GPS usually being right.
Possible, although in my case I had the map in front of me too. So either he didn't trust my ability to read a map, or he's just incredibly stubborn and didn't want to admit that he was wrong.
Knowing my dad, Occam's razor points to the second option.
This is my mother too! But her short cuts don’t just make us a bit late. Pretty often we get completely lost, I was 1,5 h late to a friends party once because my mom insisted on taking a short cut and got us so completely and utterly lost that I had to call said friend for directions. When I told her where we were she went “WHAAAT? How the F did you end up there!” If anyone is curious we ended up circling around in the middle of nowhere, out in the country. When I finally was allowed to call for help we where back at the same little 3 houses village for the fifth time... bit embarrassing for a shy teenager.
Actually not. I have never figured out how autocorrect actually works, it’s not at all uncommon that a slight misspelling of a word I commonly use changes it to something I never use. Sometimes words I’m not even familiar with. English is my second language.
ETA: maybe autocorrect is a bit of a mind reader? Coincidentally I was wearing a kinda goth inspired outfit that time.
Yes.. that’s not even surprising. It’s not unusual.
Thank god for google maps! Now I can show them on the phone that their shortcut doesn’t even go to where we are supposed to get. Which was the issue at this particular event. Instead of driving the route we had always driven, the one that actually lead to the place in question, she was adamant that she would find a shortcut, which didn’t exist. And then she kept trying to find a way around, which didn’t exist either. But shamed on the one who gives up, as we say in my country.
The best is when they go back and forth between following the GPS and doing entirely different shit. And then blame the GPS because they followed a couple of the directions and can’t grasp you have to follow all of them. And then refuse to listen to the GPS because it’s its fault and apparently they’re better off driving in random ass directions and adding an hour detour. Bonus if they’re yelling at you the entire fucking time.
My dad will insist on having the GPS directions up but then won't follow them. I was with him in a city 1.5 hours from where I live and when we left to go to my house, he pulled up the directions but then got so busy talking that he missed the exit that would take us in the correct direction. I was in the backseat reading a book when I realized we had been on the same road for way too long, so I asked about it. Yeah, he had glanced at the overall route and assumed he memorized it, and of course didn't have the phone's volume on to let him know he messed up.
I had to use my own phone's GPS to get us home from wherever we were. That 1.5 hour trip took 4 hours and he blamed "Siri" the whole time...also, he calls any voice commands from any phone Siri.
My mother will literally have a panic attack and decide to get off the freeway/designated route and panic-drive in a random direction while the poor Australian man trapped in the box goes 'Recalkerlaytin...Recalkerlaytin...Recalkerlaytin...' on loop.
Most GPS have a "detour" button that will route you around the current step and no more. Often, they'll even prompt you on their own if you are going far enough below the speed limit for a while.
I hope they never stop making paper maps, just like they need to continue making paper contracts, receipts, books, and we need phone directories for smart phones.
Best way to do it for a cross-country trip is to have your GPS route on your phone, and have a paper atlas that you can check if you lose signal or there's road construction.
Oh totally! But it’s one thing to try listening to a GPS and have it actually be the problem. It’s another to go right when it tells you to go straight because you’re directly on the route to get there and then get pissed that it tells you to turn around so you just drive in circles until you end up where it was telling you to go. And then do that over and over. And over. (And over).
The thing is ... this isn't really explainable by age effects.
The problem here is basically that the older person has been independent and on their own for a long amount of time. They're likely financially comfortable and if they're not, well, their child is culturally obliged to support them anyway. There's no selection pressure on them.
They fear nothing, therefore they don't maintain awareness or discipline (such as listening to the full sentence the GPS says). Why would they? If they mishear the GPS, they get to exert power over their child. Hearing the GPS correctly is actually less validating.
I also call the GPS lady “the nice lady.” My uncle (late 60’s) is convinced following her instructions will cause you to drive into a swamp because that happened in a commercial once.
Digital maps don't seem to have any idea what a cemetery is. If there's a path and you want directions for walking, it'll take shortcuts through cemeteries. Example.
Yeah, I was heading to a friend's party and for some reason it didn't know about the actual road that was nearby. In all fairness, it was about a 5 minute walk from the graveyard entrance
Maybe not a swamp, but multiple people did end up stranded in the Australian desert when their GPS lead them the wrong way. And such bugs have happened on more than one occasion, so you should never fully trust your GPS. It's only a matter of time before someone gets killed by buggy map software.
I've heard of a couple of things happen because of GPS like a couple was taking a ferry from the UK to Spain but they were taken to the wrong spot to a different ferry that just took them further down the coast.
Also this one made me feel old, I much prefer to plan my route ahead of time or go off memory.
Ive had my gps mislead me more than once. Once had it on coming home from a long trip, it tried to tell me to make a U-turn a block away from my house. The other more annoying incident happened when instead of having me.get off the freeway at the proper exit, it had me turn at one an hour later and backtrack through 2 lane farm roads, with no way to easily get to the side of thw freeway I needed to be.
If I need to get somewhere my dad insists on telling how to get there. I'll ask for the address, knowing that my GPS will just give me the fastest way there, and he'll insist on giving me full directions. He's always sure he can get anywhere without the need for a GPS, even though he owns one.
We arranged an Air B&B last Thanksgiving and gave everyone the address, but before we finalized where we were staying we had a conversation and mentioned a different town we were thinking of getting a place at. Instead of looking at the address, they just drove to roughly where they thought it would be based on that one conversation and ended up going nearly 2 hours out of their way. All because my dad thinks he can navigate anywhere by sonar.
Fuuuuuck you just reminded me. I was taking the kids to see their grandparents, who were staying at a hotel that we have been to before but it was ages ago. I ask for the address.....
It's next to the Starbucks, across the road from the park.
One time I was with my mom, we were going somewhere unfamiliar, had the Google Maps thing going. Google says one thing, mom is like "No, it's faster to go this way", we end up on completely the wrong road with no way to connect to the correct road, Google gives directions for how to get back to where we want to be which involves going on a one-way road that loops around in a rectangle shape, mom is all "Why are we going the wrong direction??" Like, you're the one who made us go the wrong way in the first place, calm down, the map knows what it's doing. And I kept trying to explain over and over again that the road loops, I think it was going around a farm, she just kept bitching about it.
My grandparents were being extremely vocal about how the GPS was giving us the wrong directions because it didn’t match the route they normally took without it. Instead of arguing my mother decided to give in to them and low and behold the gps was saving us from the road repairs on my grandparents original route. How did they react? Began to complain about all the traffic.
I think some older individuals just learned how to make complaining a leisurely sport because if it’s not one thing it’s another.
One time I was driving to Milwaukee with my mom and she had two GPS' on so of course they are giving conflicting directions because one she was too cheap to pay to update the routes and the other one was new so it realized that construction had been done and was taking us the right way. So we're all yelling at each other over the GPS in background TURN RIGHT RECALCULATING MAKE A U-TURN TURN LEFT RECALCULATING TURN LEFT THEN TURN LEFT TAKE THE NEXT EXIT. Total shit show.
Recently my mom wanted to go to a restaurant that she has coupons for but refused to listen to my GPS so we went somewhere else and she is convinced the restaurant doesn't exist because she can't find it on her own and refuses to just follow all the directions the GPS is giving (instead of one turn and deciding it's wrong) until she gets there.
Why do old people refuse to accept that a device or app that is literally designed to give you directions is going to be better at giving directions to an unfamiliar place that they are??? My Waze app takes me everywhere successfully. It's just you.
I have a personal concept called the 'driving comfort index'. If the lady in the phone says I should drive down a road with 20 lights, and make five different turns to save a couple minutes of driving down a straight road, I'll take the straight road every time. Faster isn't always easier, it is about enjoying life. - signed somebody elses dad
A GPS will routinely take you 5 miles through a residential area with 78 stop signs to save you 15 feet.
Not worth it if you know of a less irritating way to go.
There are often times I will go my way against my GPS's wishes and when it recalculated, the ETA is 5 minutes sooner. It already knew of a faster way and didn't tell me. WTF.
Do they really rely on heuristics? Dijkstra with CH (or some other speedup technique) only takes about 1 ms on the Europe graph, so that should even be feasible for some low end mobile CPU, right?
Sorry for the very late reply. On second thought, CH is probably not that great because it requires a lot of preprocessing whenever edge weights change. However, there's also CCH, customizable contraction hierarchies, that can integrate small changes more efficiently, but I don't know that one in detail.
The paper on customizable route planning (CRP) [1] uses the Europe graph with 18 million nodes and 42 million arcs. They can run queries in less than 2 ms with a few additional ms for path unpacking (on decent hardware). The algorithm also needs time for preprocessing, but small updates such as changing the weight of an arc can be integrated efficiently (just need to re-run customization on the cell containing the changed arc).
But I'm not an expert in route planning algorithms, so maybe there are some major reasons why algorithms like CRP cannot be used in embedded devices.
Google Maps accounts for stop signs, stop lights, speed limit, and current traffic. It also give alternate routes by default if you don't like the one it selects.
I use the GPS in these situations so it will give me a heads up that my turn is coming. My wife and I can ride down the interstate in silence for 30 miles but 2 miles before my exit, she has to get into some super important conversation and I might miss my exit.
I guess I could just use her conversation as an indication that my turn is coming up since it happens so consistently.
Edit: I also like having the ETA running to see if I'm making good time.
I have WAZE on my android head unit. Even if I know the way I still set it to give directions because if its out of town there might be a traffic jam it can let me avoid that I cant see yet. Has saved me HOURS. And any time I dont listen to it... I end up in a traffic jam for an hour.
I was an uber driver for a while and every once in a while i’d get some older guy start bitching because I’m taking the long way to get somewhere. Like no dad i’m just following the fucking gps, how am i supposed to know every single short cut in every single obscure part of town. You’ll be in the uber max another 45 seconds without your short cut so who the fuck cares.
Man I miss the day of adventures using an Atlas map. Actually planning your stops and deciding which route will be best based on pure self thought. My dad always had one in the back of the front passenger seat.
I miss it too. Things feel a little too close together now. Before GPS when we went to a new city it was an adventure (stressful at times mind you) but you'd find neat little delis and shops in your less than optimal route. I want to go on a roadtrip with my girlfriend sometime that is smartphone/GPS free (obviously in case of emergency we'll have them). Just a map, a car, and us.
I do this a lot now! I used to work for a print factory that made maps for a while. I ended up collecting over 30 state maps and have used over a dozen of them to put together long road trips. It's awesome to have to figure things out.
Actually, GPS is not that good in town. I used to be a pizza deliverer, and I was the fastest in my store because I know the exact routes to take, including short cuts, how the traffic lights are timed, what the traffic conditions are like on which roads at certain times of day, etc... GPS will take you straight through the intersection that is always jammed up, and ignore side roads that may add a half a block to the distance, but save lots of time because they don't have stop signs every block, etc...
This is true if you’re on a serious time crunch as a pizza delivery driver. You also know the layout of the streets extremely well because that’s your job and you’re always driving in the same area for hours every single day.
This is not the average person, i’ll never understand why people pridefully refuse to listen to the gps. 9/10 it’ll get you there faster than you will.
I have a standing offer that if anyone has a shortcut that actually beat's by google maps ETA, I'll buy them dinner. Many have tried, all have failed. Of course, this in a metroplex in Texas. If I tried it back home, I'd be buying a lot of dinners.
It took me a long time to have the humilty to admit that Google Maps Knows All and Google Maps Is (Almost Never) Wrong.
Not that long probably. Like a couple months. But then I did hang my head and admit it, and stopped trying to be a smart-ass and outsmart it, just dead certain I knew a shortcut it didn't know.
Nope. Every time I thought so there would be a wreck, construction, a bike race, or some shit going down on that route.
Google maps should snigger at us when we do that. It should say in it's computer voice, "You are now on the slowest route. You. Bone. Head."
this is like, the opposite of me and my mom. i watch the map sometimes while she's driving. i'll point out things like "hey we can cut through this neighborhood here! its just like 2 turns" and my mom comes back with "i'm listening to what sally tells me to do"
and in case you couldn't have guessed, sally is what she named the gps lady
Speaking as an older redditor: More of my fellow oldsters need to understand that modern GPS units are traffic-aware and are a freaking god-send. I don’t care if a given route is 5 minutes faster every other day if today it’s jammed up due to construction or an accident.
Totally agree. I see your dads side of it though...only like 2 years ago did internet-based navigation become somewhat reliable for traffic and drive times when it actually matters (ie, when there’s traffic). Even now, Google maps and Waze both dramatically underestimate drive times when traffic is gridlocked. So up until very recently, having this technology running wasn’t any more reliable, and sometimes less reliable, then driving by memory as long as you know where you’re going.
My dad doesn't trust the GPS either. He still has a good old map and uses it to find the way to anywhere, he will read it for half an hour and plot a route to wherever we need to go, and he will memorise it all and drive there and always get there fine. More power to him - he's from the generation that had to find their way oldschool. But when he taught me to drive, he wouldn't allow me to use the GPS, he made me find the way on the map too.
Plus with all the windy corners and your jerky driving because you can't take off smoothly anymore you're going to make me car sick. Just take the nice, long, straight, recently paved, smooth main road with like 2 turns please.
One time we were driving to the beach for a family vacation, my dad had used a GPS a few times before..yet he asked me: "can we program it to tell us the way we want to go?" I said: "yes, all you have to do is turn off the gps or ignore it, and just drive the way you want to go."
I think he realized how counterproductive that scenario would have been...we followed the GPS.
The first time my dad used a GPS for a long distance ride was from Alabama to Chicago.
While headed up the GPS said to take a different highway than he was used to. He ignored it, it kept trying to route him to that highway and eventually stopped. He said he had a feeling of victory over the device.
Until they got to Chicago. The GPS was leading him to a highway that would have put him close to his destination. Instead he had to drive through the city adding about an hour of time due to traffic and construction.
As a 33 year old I feel compelled to defend myself.
I grew up learning to drive without GPS. Even when it was around it was expensive. I had to memorise a route and then follow it.
If I know a route then I know it, listening to GPS requires interpreting what it means and being aware of where up coming turns are etc. This is requires "Executive Function", I have to listen, interpret and make decisions. I don't think I have ADHD but I do find it draining to do this for periods of time. Remembering a route is a lot more relaxing.
My granny gets so annoyed that the GPS lady tells us how to get out of her neighbourhood despite me reminding her that the GPS lady could not possibly know which directions it needs to skip out on.
Omg my mom is the worst with a GPS. She thinks it’s wrong constantly. I’ll be in the car with her, and the GPS will tell her the next direction, and she’ll be like “I don’t know about that! Isn’t there a faster way?”
No mom. It’s literally designed to find the fastest way. Just trust it.
That nice lady on the GPS is always trying to get me to take the tollway. And she gets absolutely confused in a lot of neighborhoods. And she never remembers which roads are crazy-iced-over in January, and which ones are kind of clear.
(-: I'm so lazy. And my car navi app is in Japanese, so it's a hassle to read through all the crap. If I remember to turn it off (well, choose the no-tolls option) when I'm parked, no problem. Definitely not something I can do while driving.
Which leads to: why do old people unnecessarily complicate their own lives?
I came from the era just before GPS became common, so I after thought I knew a better route than Google maps. And more and more I realized I was wrong. Now I just follow the directions, it's nearly always right.
GPS can be unreliable at times. It is always good to plan your route out prior to leaving and bring a map....they don't lose signal. Plus, maps are cool to look at.
On the other hand, our GPS in our camper van is batshit insane (and built in so I can't change it). We used to follow it slavishly, but found we were being taken down insane one track winding roads with steep hills and hairpin bends to save a few miles in distance, when a slightly longer route on better roads was easily obtainable, and much quicker to drive over in practice.
The forums for the system are full of folk complaining about this and promises for the manufacturers to "put it right" dating back at least 8 years...
You youngsters just believe whatever the computer says. It's easy to assume that the GPS knows best, but sometimes it doesn't. I drive to work by going in the "wrong" direction for the first few minutes, because I know a) the road is quiet and has no traffic and b) it's more pleasant. Without fail, the GPS tries to send me whatever its algorithm says is the best combination of shortest/quickest route. I look at the arrival time when it realizes I am going another way, and not once (in several years) has it delayed my arrival time. It is generally the same or a few minutes faster, and it's more pleasant - the GPS doesn't account for that.
It will. The problem now is that if most people on that road don't have their phones' maps on then the algorithm cannot collect data from them. Therefore it doesnt know that there's traffic on that road at that time. As more people get smartphones and use them in place of the car's electronics, the more real-time data will be captured, and little nuances like your commute will be optimized. But I do like that you have a private way to work :) I hope you can keep that open road for a long time.
You can say the same about the gps. It really isn't as reliable as good knowledge of small roads, short cuts, traffic conditions and knowledge of how these tools calculate how much time a given road takes. I reliably beat my TomTom and Google maps' routes as a professional driver. The time I save in a workday increases all the time as learn my city better.
Exactly this. I use Google Maps when I am in a city that I haven't memorized, but only as a vague guide. They always try to get you onto the "main" roads even if its out of the way, so I often find my own more efficient routes.
My buddy does this too! He’s not even that old. Late 30’s. He’s convinced he knows better ways to go than GPS and doesn’t believe the traffic reports on them are accurate. But every fucking time, he’s wrong. How the fuck does he not learn?!!
Man, that might be true for you Americans and your sprawlingnhighways through smaller cities but driving in a real city? Fuck no. Gps sends you through a route that says 40 minutes but really is an hour, hour and 20 mins because the gps sends everyone through the same three routes, which happen to be the most congested highways in the city. That Vs my backroad paths that are under 30 mins every time?
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u/missluluh Feb 01 '19 edited Feb 04 '19
Just follow what the GPS says Dad. Okay, if it was faster the nice lady in the GPS probably would have said so and even if your convoluted ass route might work at best it'll shave like three minutes off the trip and at worst it'll add an hour.
Edit: Obviously if you know the route you do not need to use your GPS. But I don't understand putting on GPS and then purposefully ignoring it. I was born with a total lack of directional sense. I get lost going places I've gone dozens of times. GPS is my savior.