Use your satnav!

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  • People seem to be getting caught by speed cameras more than ever! Now that satnavs are cheap to download on your phone and cheap to include speed cameras I can't understand why speed cameras are so successful. Pre satnav era I would get nabbed maybe once every 12-18 months by cameras, these days never, even when driving somewhere new. The only time there is a risk is if a mobile camera has just arrived an no one has reported it yet - the more people that use satnavs, install camera alerts and report cameras, the less that will happen!


    http://www.itv.com/news/central/2…in-nine-months/

  • I use my satnav all the time except on local journeys. There's one fitted in the car but that doesn't have speed cameras or traffic alerts. I have a TomTom plugged in and not only has it saved me hours of sitting in jams but on the rare occasions I do speed a bit it's saved me getting a fine too.

    Another plus on the car is the speed limiter I can set so if I'm in a 30 mph or 40 mph zone it beeps if I go over that. I sometimes have to travel a long distance on a 40 mph limit road which has a lot of cameras on it and I don't have to keep checking my speed hasn't crept up.

  • One thing that amuses me when I'm down in the west of Cornwall is watching all those using sat navs to get to Land's End out of Penzance on the A30:

    They must have the shortest route set as they all blindly turn off the big wide main road and head for a small village called St Buryan, the road out of there goes to Land's End but it's very narrow, has hair-pin bends and hidden granite walls inside the hedges. Shorter by about a mile but full of dangers including a bus route.^^

  • I use my satnav all the time except on local journeys. There's one fitted in the car but that doesn't have speed cameras or traffic alerts. I have a TomTom plugged in and not only has it saved me hours of sitting in jams but on the rare occasions I do speed a bit it's saved me getting a fine too.

    Another plus on the car is the speed limiter I can set so if I'm in a 30 mph or 40 mph zone it beeps if I go over that. I sometimes have to travel a long distance on a 40 mph limit road which has a lot of cameras on it and I don't have to keep checking my speed hasn't crept up.

    A similar thing happened to me when we were on a holiday near Bovey Tracey although my satnav is set to the quickest route. We wanted to go to a pub which had been recommended and the satnav took us down the narrowest road I've ever driven down with very few passing places, hedges scraping both sides of the car for miles. Murderous journey, constantly looking out for something coming the other way.

    When we finally got to the pub and ordered a drink and our meal the landlord said "Which way did you come?" So we told him and he said " I wouldn't have come that way if I'd been you."

    I didn't know whether to hit him or laugh.:)

  • When I went for my day trip to Bournemouth last week, its around a four hour trip to get there from my home and my brother who was driving, cut at least forty minutes off that....:rolleyes: He was using a sat nav.

    To be fair to him and others, the sat nav was excellent, he was using his smart phone, and it was especially useful on our detour to Portsmouth on the way back home. He just spoke "Historical Portsmouth Dockyard" into the gadget and it worked out exactly where to go.

    The only issue I noticed was with motorway turn-offs. The sat nav tells you to turn off one motorway and join the next, but what it doesn't tell you is that as you off turning off the motorway, in some cases, the motorway you are turning onto splits quickly into two different directions and you must make a instant judgement on which lane to go in. The sat nav doesn't warn about that. So eyes are still needed for now!

  • Definitely. I've generally found that at roundabouts and a lot of complicated junctions it pays to read the road signs and follow them rather than look at the satnav until one is safely on the right road.

  • Satnav is an aid... I find all these stories where people are totally reliant on them pretty weird. Having said that I suppose without a satnav these type of people would end up totally lost?

  • Just had to Google what a ed209 was, it's from the Robocop films. I should stick that in the what have you googled thread, anyway, I digress, I agree. Wouldn't be good down country lanes especially with all those guns on it!^^

  • The crunch comes when the cars are fully automated and then it is the machines making all the decisions about junctions, roundabout etc. Hope the tech is a "little" improved by then.

    More improved than human drivers? Seems to be already.

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