Roadtrips: maps or GPS

[FLRoads]

So when you go on a road trip, what do you take, a road map or your "Tom Tom" (meaning GPS unit)??  I'm curious to see the responses from this one...

[Chris]

I usually have both; GPS for inside cities, if I need to find a shopping mall or some other POI for instance, because nearly no maps show those in Europe.

For planning; GPS can't match a map, a map shows you interesting features along your routes, possible interesting alternative routes, how many cities there are on your route, and for reference when seeing places signed your GPS doesn't show at every interchange.

Most people, however, turn on their GPS and have no idea how far something actually is. They don't pay attention to signs anymore, and newspapers regularly have articles about dumbass drivers who follow their GPS so closely without thinking they end up in pedestrian tunnels, creeks or other places a car isn't suppose to be.

[John]

Maps, I have good photographic memory so I look at a map and then I can usually remember my route.

[corco]

GPSes are ruining society and I refuse to carry one or ride in a car with someone who has one in their possession

[rawr apples]

ME 

[Bryant5493]

^^ I'm the same way.

I look at a map and follow routes from memory.


Be well,

Bryant

[Voyager]

I am a GPS.

[PalmettoDP]

I agree with an earlier post. A GPS is good for finding points of interest within a city, but for long distance trips I prefer a paper map.

[Voyager]

Honestly I've never really needed a map...

[Duke87]

I don't like those GPS things. Something about having a computer tell me what to do creeps me out.
Now, the portable map (sans automated directions) could be useful, but it's really not necessary and not worth the expense.

I don't find myself driving unfamiliar places that often, anyway. And when I am, it's easy enough to consult google maps before I go to find it. Not for directions, though. I much prefer to just locate the destination and then come up with my own route. In my experience, this is often better than using the route they give you, simply by virtue of the fact that the computer doesn't have a brain, can't think, and thus has limited capability for these things. It also helps a lot to be able to supplement your own knowledge into things. For instance, if the directions send you down a road that you know has horrible traffic, or is under construction, you may wish to go a different way.

[Darkchylde]

I take neither.

[Revive 755]

I just have a couple maps handy in case I've forgotten exactly which route I need to take.  I have no plans to get a GPS unit, but sometimes I wouldn't mind something that could say whether a certain restaurant is in town or not.  It would be nicer rather than searching the town for it but not find it at the time, only to check online later and find it in an unexpected part of that town.

[deathtopumpkins]

Maps... Never trusted GPS since one day a friend was picking me up from my house and his GPS first told him it was miles away in a different city, but then that it was in Connecticut! 700 miles off! Plus there are the classic cases of them being wrong and people taking them too literally...

And so I think I'll just stick with my trusty maps and memory, tyvm.

[DrZoidberg]

I love maps, and buy a new road atlas each year, but my car does have a GPS, but I don't use it for directions as much as I use it to find places of interest, restaurants, etc.  It makes it easy, if we're out, to find a place my wife and I, along with our picky eater 4 year old, can agree upon. 

[Alex]

I usually take nothing for day trips and on longer ones, I take my "roads traveled" atlas (a 2001 road atlas with all of the roads I've ever taken highlighted in orange), so I can choose routes for new lines on my map. I also take that same atlas when county collecting. Otherwise I try to score new official state maps on longer trips, and sometimes use those.

[Michael]

Maps, I have good photographic memory so I look at a map and then I can usually remember my route.

Me too!

I am a GPS.

I've had people call me that!

[akotchi]

I get directions off of a source like google maps, but I only use them as a last resort or for the last few miles in a city to the hotel or other site.  I will take a road atlas in the car, and my wife usually navigates.  Many side trips are born that way!

[Hellfighter]

The map's in my head!

[mightyace]

I usually use my memory or a map.

A couple of reasons:

1) I've just been too cheap to buy one.
2) In a place that's growing rapid like middle Tennessee (was), it's hard for those GPSs to be any more up to date than a map.
3) I don't trust computer routing.

[Scott5114]

Maps. They're just easier.

Someone posted on MTR about someone hearing a "turn left now" prompt from a GPS, and immediately turned left...right onto a friggin' railroad track.

[yanksfan6129]

I pretty much have the 2 digit (and by extension, 1 digit) interstate system memorized in my head in terms of what goes where, so I work as a map on long-distance trips. For exact destinations on city streets, I admit it, I use the GPS. But what do what? I can't be a detailed map of every populated place in the country!

[Chris]

This sign says "We are building a new city. Do not trust your GPS. This road is REALLY closed".

Also, truckers shouldn't use GPS in a city since we have too many low tunnels and bridges;


This Dutch sucker took the advise of "turn left now" to serious, and drove 200 meters on ice before he broke through it:

[ctsignguy]

When i took my trip east this past fall, my mom gave me her Garmin GPS and i was told "Try it out and see if this was something your dad wasted his money on befoer he passed away"

While most of my route was already planned in my head (Joey K told me where i needed to go), the Garmin earned its salary on the addresses....it did save me quite a bit of time as i was able to punch in the addresses of  highway garages and it took me straight there..and in a couple of instances, saved me from some lengthy searching (Providence and Portland, Maine) for places...

Although i had to admit, just for funsies, i had it on driving back from Bangor....it was VERY odd to be essentially looking at the map of Maine 'upside down'..almost disorienting in a way

[Sykotyk]

I despise GPS, honestly. I've driven a car that had one, and hated it. Nothing like knowing you have 1600 more miles of this exact same road to drive.

I use maps, and have a great sense of direction. Plus, I don't trust that the people who make the GPS units truly understand what is the best route. All they're taking is raw data, parsing it, and producing the 'primary' route between two points.

Most GPS units that I've dealt with (they may have gotten better), tell you to take I-70 east to I-135, to I-35.


Anybody who has driven US287 will tell you that's, by far, the best route between those two cities.

Sykotyk

[SSOWorld]

GPS?

Hellz no!

I could have bought one last December with my new car, but I opted not to - for good reason

The only set of eyes I trust are my own.