to think there should be a Satnav that allows you to choose the easiest, safest route (rather than just the quickest)

I think it won't be long before we have more personalised AI enabled sat nav where it learns your preferences and recommends routes based on those. I would love one that took me the traffic light controlled way rather than having to do a dodgy right hand turn at a hellish junction with no lights that's a well known accident blackspot.

Garmin and Tomtom satnav units have settings where you can add your vehicle’s dimensions.
if you tell it you’re in a motor home or whatever it’ll stick to wider roads

Some of the routes Google maps took us on were absolutely ludicrous. Not just ludicrous but dangerous too. Narrow winding single track lanes with two metre high hedges and very few passing places when there was an A road going the same way half a mile away.

But why follow the Google route when you knew there was an alternative nearby that you would prefer?

After driving over a thousand miles in the UK in the last week I wholeheartedly agree. Some of the routes Google maps took us on were absolutely ludicrous. Not just ludicrous but dangerous too. Narrow winding single track lanes with two metre high hedges and very few passing places when there was an A road going the same way half a mile away.

@Ponderingwindow you sound like my kind of person! 😁

Satnavs on BMWs should make a very unpleasant noise when indicators are not used.

On SUVs they should only send you on wide roads.

Google Maps does this, but The technology to explain why the 3 very similar length routes suggested might be preferred doesn’t really exist yet. I think we are getting closer.

for now it will still be a general thing though, where I send my young driver down one or another because I know that there is a very difficult interchange or turn. Programs that work purely on nodes and speed don’t have that information at the moment.

this is an interesting idea though. It is too much data to manually collect. It is the kind of thing that could be learned though. The shapes of roads make a huge difference combined with car density and that information could be extrapolated to other locations. You could take the data from the driverless cars or put sensors in regular cars. Perhaps the data is already being collected by the same vehicles that are creating the maps now that I think about it. They don’t run those cars often enough though to get enough sampling. Sorry, data scientist, figuring out the easiest way to do this is fun…

The problem with 'easiest' route is that it's very subjective and dependent on very specific local conditions, including changing ones (e.g. visibility at junctions due to hedgerow growth etc..).

As a new driver, I preferred the narrow one-track lane to the seemingly more straightforward route that included a right-hand turn onto a busy road. I made myself do the latter to increase my confidence!

Yes! I love Waze but have learned it is very good at thinking you will actually be able to drive at the national speed limit on country lanes - including single lane roads - and so sends you off on a route which is theoretically four minutes faster but, by the time you’ve actually driven at a safe speed and then got stuck behind a cyclist and reversed umpteen times and had to inch past a couple of cars, it takes much longer and is infinitely more stressful. Earlier this year, my husband and I had gone separately to an event involving the DC. It was a wet, windy miserable evening. I left to come home 20 mins earlier than he did but still got home much later as he’d stuck to the usual route (motorway & A road) whereas I’d stupidly followed the “traffic building” alternative route only to almost be in tears about half way home as I was having such a miserable time of it. I was constantly had people who were no doubt locals to these particular roads up my backside as they knew the roads and then didn’t know the etiquette on who should reverse when you met as I hadn’t spotted the passing spaces. I was so far along these roads that my choice was either to continue or retrace my steps but, as soon as I could, I abandoned it and joined the usual route so had to then deal with the congestion on that anyway! Since then, I have learned to always look at the route rather than blindly follow it

I think 'easy' and 'safest' are quite subjective. Some people would be confident driving on a single track road with passing places but get stressed about roundabouts and big junctions, for example. I think it depends a lot on what someone's most used to.

I certainly think it's a good idea to be able to filter routes in more specific ways, though, eg 'avoid motorways' or 'bypass town centres' or 'avoid single-track' or something like that.

Yes! It's not to do with driving ability but to do with the most sensible route that's suitable to take lots of traffic. I do feel for people who live or work in rural parts of holiday destinations such as Cornwall or Devon during the summer months. Having to stop their tractor every few mins so cars can reverse down single track lanes away from you. The tracks are often really only suitable for local traffic and not cars cutting through on their way to elsewhere.

Not all single track lanes need to be or can be avoided but I'd much rather add several mins to journey time than clogging up unsuitable roads. When away now I will always manually look at routes suggested now and add stops along the way that avoid such roads if the route seems ridiculous. Often you end up having to add multiple stops in though as the sat navs are determined to take the more 'direct' route.

I would like a ‘main lane’ function. In rural areas there’s generally a lane which is mostly wide enough to pass, or has plenty of passing places. This is what the locals use for most of their journey, turning off onto the tiny lanes as necessary for the final few miles.

The sat nav seems to choose the tiniest, steepest lanes with fewest passing places. Which saves a few miles but is a lot slower.

I don't think sat navs assume you can drive at the NSL on minor roads, they use phone data to measure how long it takes people to travel each section and then adds it up to get journey times.

However, I don't want to unintentionally turn residential streets and other minor roads not designed for heavy traffic into rat runs to shorten my journey by a minute or two, so don't thank my sat nav from trying to make me do this because it's not very well designed. It's a lot easier to drive along a main road with minimal turns than it is to be constantly going left, right, across junctions etc.

Fellow towing people - Tom Tom Go Expert has an offer on subscriptions at the minute, the app integrates with CarPlay and Android Auto. It’s £60 for 12 months.
It has a lot of preference options as well as routing based on height/weight/length to avoid low bridges and unsuitable roads.
I don’t work for them btw!

YANBU. The other issue is that these roads aren't designed for a significant amount of traffic so you don't need many extra vehicles on them to be completely gridlocked because everyone is trying to squeeze past, needing to reverse etc. Also not great in the dark.

I go out into the countryside a lot and the Peak District is especially bad for this. I've stated looking at a paper map and also making a note of the major towns/villages on the route so I can navigate by road signs where possible.

There are Sat navs for lorries etc

Are you talking about built-in navigation systems, portable units or Carplay/Android Auto OP?

I’d like a satnav where I could set a preferred route, for places I go every once in a while.
i went somewhere recently that I’d not been in 6-8 weeks, satnav sent me through the single lane tracks between fields on the way there (and I was lucky not to encounter a tractor). On the way home an hour later it sent me a perfectly sensible route on the A road. The single lane roads are no quicker in reality as they might be a 60 limit but you can’t go 60mph.
The next time I have to go there I’ll be making sure it’s the A road way.

I want one with Alan Rickman's voice...😍

I’d love a Satnav that avoided single track roads - is it fitted to the car or standalone please?

If any satnav designers are reading, I’d also like an option that would allow the ability to understand whether you’re being sent through a housing estate instead of on the motorway because it’s going to save you 3 seconds (assuming you don’t have to back up or get stuck at the traffic lights) or because there’s a 20 minute hold up on the main route.

The sat navs are increasing traffic on tiny roads that were not designed for it, would usually just have very local cars and now get additional people who have been sent there by the robot overlords. Various signs I've seen saying "if your satnav tries to send you down here, ignore it". A bit of common sense needs to be programmed in.

I think ABRP ( a better route planner ) has this facility - you add specific vehicles to it and the routes will take into account the dimensions of your vehicle.

Yep - I agree. Often Google maps route isn't quicker either because many country lanes you can't drive national speed limit on as it suggests because it's not safe.

Let me guess... you're on the young side, not been driving that long, you've never been in someone else's shoesand you've never been involved in a motoring accident that was not your fault? Because if you had, you wouldn't make such a crass comment.

Yes I agree. I’ve ended up in very lonely country single track roads before. I want A roads where possible