I have a sat-nav unit in my car.
And I don't trust it. I will typically plan most journeys in advance by hand, using a road map, and use the sat-nav merely as a handy aide-mémoire for the trip. The sat-nav also knows about traffic problems, but more often than not will wait until I'm already stopped in traffic before letting me know there's some congestion.

I keep an A-Z of London and a road atlas of the entire country in the passenger seat-back pocket, just in case.
( flake has nothing against your right leg, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 3:44, 10 replies)

ebay the bugger
( enoughblueskyforsailorstrousers, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 4:03, closed)

I would, but it's built into the car.
( flake has nothing against your right leg, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 4:07, closed)

do the car then.
www.amish.com have what you're after old boy :)
( enoughblueskyforsailorstrousers, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 4:40, closed)

A two-horsepower carriage?
I'm trading in my car today. Today, I tell you.
( flake has nothing against your right leg, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 15:36, closed)

AotZ
i love mine... i've got 1 from every city i've lived. I've got a special posh ring bound 8 quid version of Newcastle upon tyne where i live now - it's been thumbed to death! i HAVE to plan my route in advance just so i know where i'm going - no wonder pillocks end up going up farm tracks blindly....

i love laughing at people obviously going home from work with them turned on stuck to their wind screen - are you lonley? do u need the company of the voice to justify your empty lives?
(TheManofScience, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 9:44, closed)

Me too.
I sometimes even ask PEOPLE for directions!
(Robotnik, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 9:53, closed)

You've taken that too far.

( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Thu 11 Nov 2010, 12:23, closed)

In complete agreement....
Bought one myself (cheap, mate of mine hacked it and stuck TomTom software on it but that's another story)used it a few times. Each time I arrived somewhere I would think "Hmm wouldn't have gone that way, far too long"

Still use maps every day driving an average of 100 miles a day. By time you can programme a sat-nag and waited for it to find a GPS signal and calculate the route I'll have found the address on a map and be off.

Sat-nag was probably invented by the same idiot who invented the garden strimmer.... don't get me started, shears anytime... neater finsh, don't scatter grass everywhere or shoot stones into the centre of your eyeball... and yes it happened to me once and I was blind for a week!
(Barnetboy, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 10:35, closed)

Google Maps
Just printed off some maps for my journey to Warmwell at the weekend as I refuse to have a satnav, they are the devils work (although I quite like the Devil).
(Simple Simon, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 11:14, closed)

Satnav + Mk1 brain and eyeball = WIN
I refused to get a satnav for years: they were the devil's work, maps were better looking etc etc.

Then I had a week in which I had to physically carry the following from one vehicle to another: Truckers Atlas GB (with the bridge heights), London, Cardiff, Birmingham and Bristol A2Zs, county maps of Somerset, Gwent, Glamorgan, Gloucestershire, Berkshire, Essex and Norfolk, plus sleeping bag, laptop, DVDs, clean clothes and a BIG pack of babywipes. And all that had to fit on a motorbike at 0300 Monday, and come home again at 2300 Friday night.

Bought a Tomtom, downloaded the bridge POIs, and used common sense. It helped that I've been driving HGVs for 20 years; you get a feel for unsafe side roads.

These days I drive the same route every night, but the Tomtom goes in so that at any moment I can plan a diversion and calculate ETAs. Handy last week when the A1/M1/M62 went to tits around Sheffield/ Leeds.
(all my scars face forward possesses 2.5% of a hyperalloy combat chassis, Thu 11 Nov 2010, 11:14, closed)