Bolton Driving School

Do we rely on Sat Nav’s to much?

It’s been over 2 years since the Sat Nav was introduced into the car practical driving test, 4 out of 5 tests will follow the sat nav for approximately 20 minutes of independent driving.

The independent drive is the opportunity to show an examiner that are you truly ready to be on the road on your own, by following the instructions that the sat nav reads out to you or by following a series of road signs, you are 100% driving on your own.

During my Driving lessons around the Bolton and Bury areas we practice using them to help you get into a good routine when following them, we even let you set a route to some where you may be travelling to after you pass(within reason tho).

A lot of students that are not ready for tests think to themselves ‘I’ll just have a go, the examiner won’t let me crash’,

Well there are 2 things wrong with this statement, firstly the examiner has no responsibility to jump in to stop a crash from happening, plus lets say you do get a “flukey” pass, who’s going to stop you crashing when you are on your own? 

The divine intervention?

Anyway I digress, so sat nav’s communicate to you in two ways,

1, A verbal instruction.

2, The instructions on the screen.

The verbal instruction can not always be relied upon, for instance it might say “ in 200 yards turn left”, but there is no left turn, the road just goes to the left, or the other way around, “in 200 yards bair left”, but it is actually a turn left, this is when taking a glimpse at the sat nav screen you can see the highlighted road and relate it to what you can see in front of you.

From the picture you can see that the road you are following is in blue and your destination is in 110 yards, now a lot of students usually say at this point “I don’t know what 110 yards looks like”, there is no need to worry at this point it does count down to the instruction it has given you.

Also looking at the picture you can see that the other roads are a different colour which helps you stay on track.

There can be a lot of information on a sat nav screen such as speed limits, these are not to be relied upon, you must ensure you have made the correct observations to ensure you know the speed limit.

Why does it display the wrong speed limit sometimes?, 

So the highways agencies for each area make certain changes to a road such as speed limits depending on some critical information they have access to, such as accidents in any given area, so if there are sufficient incidents on a particular road they may decide to take action to ensure that ‘Road Safety’ is improved and lowering speed limits is one of them, they may add traffic calming measures such as speed humps.

Then the information takes quite some time to filter down to the sat nav’s, sometimes taking years, there is a road near me that used to be 40mph and was lowered over 5 years ago, it still shows on the sat nav as a 40mph.

If you are pulled up speeding the officer will not accept the excuse that ‘you are following the instruction from the sat nav’, you would end up potentially being prosecuted for ‘driving without due care and attention’, the offence code you would end up with on your licence would effect your car insurance.

 

The Pros Of Satellite Navigation

• You never get lost – Providing you’ve downloaded all the latest maps, and you ensure you always type the correct address into the device, having a sat nav in the car should mean you never get lost, no matter how obscure or out-of-the-way your destination may be.
• Journey times will be decreased – You might know how to get from A to B, but it’s possible that you could be taking a longer route than is required. As soon as you turn on a sat nav and enter your postcodes, it will automatically calculate the best route possible. With high end models, how this is worked out could even be affected by current traffic information.
• It doubles as an entertainment system – If you opt to buy the cheapest product on the market, it probably won’t include this feature. However, if you spend more than around £200 on your sat nav, it could be cutting-edge enough to deal with CDs and DVDs.

The Cons Of Satellite Navigation

• It’s not always 100% accurate – You’ve probably seen stories in the national press where people have driven their cars into a pond or onto a railway line because the sat nav told them to turn left, right? Well, although these people obviously have no common sense, that does happen from time to time.
• It can be very expensive – As I mentioned a moment ago, if you want high end models, you should expect to pay hundreds of pounds, and some people find this a little over the top. Fair dos though, you do get a lot for your money when opting for these expensive models, and the service they provide is most definitely superior.

 

Sat nav fails

• Two Swedish holidaymakers ended up taking a wrong turn or two when heading for Capri as they had actually typed Carpi into their sat nav (it’s around 400 miles away).
• A group of 4 British tourists ended up stuck for a staggering 4 days after their sat nav took them down a muddy dirt track in the Australian outback!
• Tourists in Wales better not rely on their sat nav on their way to the beautiful Aberdulais Falls; A lot of the time, they end up in a cul-de-sac near the falls in Neath Valley, because the two destinations share a postcode.
• A group of tourists from the UK wanted to take a shopping trip to Lille, France, but ended up in a Belgian village of the same name, after their driver accidentally picked the wrong one on his sat nav.

Bolton Driving School