Drivers beware in the UK, as using a navigation unit could get you stuckâliterally!Anyone who's driven in England knows that here are some very narrow roads over there. I remember once driving a mid-sized Rover through Mousehole, a small village in Cornwall, in which pedestrians had to flatten themselves against the walls of buildings just in order to let me pass.
It turns out that navigation units are all the rage in the UK as they are here. Many a lorry driver has found himself stuck on roads that are too narrow for large vehicles to drive on...
ateixeira says:
09:41 AM, 02/27/07
I've heard from a lot of non-GPS owners that these types of problems are a big concern, and my response is very simple - you have to apply common sense.
Most GPS systems can avoid things like time-restricted roads that go one-way during rush hours, toll roads, and other things like that. I'm sure they could just add a database of narrow roads.
Even if they didn't, custom points-of-interest lists could be created to warn people with large vehicles that they are approaching narrow roads.
Simple solutions exist, but none better than the driver applying his/her own common sense. They might have driven down that narrow path even without a GPS, so where's the harm?
actualsize says:
10:26 AM, 02/27/07
I've used many systems and have found similar bad routing problems here in the states. And the problems are usually more acute in remote/unfamiliar areas where I could really use some routing help. Why pay the cash if you frequently have to disregard the advice?
These things are only as good as the Navteq database underpinning most of them. For me, that database isn't good enough yet.
ateixeira says:
07:31 AM, 02/28/07
Try one of the updated databases.
I felt that way about Map Source City Select v6, which came with mine, but they're up to version 8 now, and it is night-and-day better.
Basically the market is booming, big time, and that's given them the funding to better update the maps. The v6 maps were created 2 years ago, but were missing roads and detours that existed 8 years ago.
The current maps, v8? I have yet to find a mistake in the map database. They're that much better.
gmguy111 says:
10:33 AM, 02/28/07
yteah my friend has a cadillac CTs form the first generation and back then there was a golf course by her house. recently they built over the golf course and every time she drives her car in that area the Nav system says she is driving in a golf course and as always in the end GPS can only do so much and in the end it relies on common sense and common sense is that something as big as a lorrie cannot fit in a narrow road