To be irritated that my DH is so reliant on a satnav

[GothicRainbow]

Even just on short local journeys that he should know as he drives them often enough he insists on using it. He is completely and utterly reliant on it and it drives me nuts!

We're currently driving back South after a weekend away and the journey is pretty simple M1, M25, M3 then home. I fell asleep (up a lot of the night with DS, hence why I'm not driving) and wake up to find we've missed the M25 junction and we are merrily driving towards Brent Cross. Apparently he didn't see the M25 junction and it's not his fault because we didn't have the satnav on .

We've now added another half hour on to an already long journey!

This is me!

I love googlemaps!

OP, I sympathise, your DH wasn't concentrating for a moment and missed the junction. I have a car with sat nav that is 10 years old. I always research the route online first before putting the destination onto the satnav, then edit the route I want to take, its easy to do.

Yesterday we went on a route that included new roads and the new bridge of the Firth of Forth. It was funny to see the little red arrow gliding over fields and water.

I don't use it for regular journeys but occasionally will switch it on when approaching congestion because it is handy for being able to go a different way but still be steered to the destination without having to stop and get the map out.

I use it but don't rely on it.

"I've driven all over England in my day, visiting prisons in places I'd never been to before. I have a perfectly useful road atlas, updated each year and I'd consult it before setting off, memorising the route, or if necessary jotting down the junctions, road numbers etc. I never got lost. What's hard about that?"

Not everyone has your fantastic capacity for memorising directions for a start. Plus, when you are lost in the middle of a busy city centre in three lanes of moving traffic how is it possible to stop and look at a map or a list of directions?

I have visited prisons in a previous working life and none of the ones I went to were in the middle of city centres. Wakefield is probably the one nearest to the middle of a city, but Wakefield isn't as complicated to drive around as Leeds or Bradford.

I used to write down road names and directions pre satnav, and it is great for getting to a town or city, but not always practical for when in a city, especially when it is busy.

I'm another lover of maps I do not own a sat nav I like my hand scribbled maps - I look on Google street view as well to see where I am going to end up

I have a good sense of direction though and I am good at noting and remembering landmarks etc

I also don't mind going a bit wrong now and then - adds to the sense of adventure

I still prefer maps and use google map and street view, but I do find a satnav invaluable for directing me round busy city centres because I can't just stop and look at directions in three lanes of moving traffic. Going wrong in a one way system in a large city is very frustrating.

Bunbaker, I wouldn't say (as you do, rather sarcastically) that I have 'a fantastic capacity for memorising directions'. The routes involved merely two or three major roads/motorways. Once arrived in the town nearest the prison, I'd go by the map issued by the prison itself. Highpoint, Norwich, Weyland, Blundeston and Hollersley Bay were easy to locate. As was Parkhurst on the Isle of Wight. The only tricky ones were the Scrubs (I took the train anyway as this involved travel to London and out on the Underground), and the ghastly one I always dreaded, The Mount in Hemel Hempstead. This involved the infamous Magic Roundabout, and I defy any sat-nav to guide one around that successfully! Prisons are notorious for not being signposted, so I was always careful before travelling to get the gen.
People forget that sat-navs are a new thing to us older folk and we managed quite well without them. If people on here swear by them, fine, but I prefer to use maps.

By the way, my sister always likes to have warning of speed cameras, and I can never understand this. One should be abiding by the speed limit at all times, so the existence of a camera is irrelevant. She doesn't agree and zooms along at breakneck speed in her souped-up new Focus. She gives me a heart attack.

I don't see why he can't use the sat nav if he wants to...but if he needs it, why isn't he setting it up?

My FiL is obsessed with his satnav, to the point where he won't drive anywhere at all without it. Despite having had a job which required him to navigate professionally. It actually causes him difficulties as it likes him to go different ways to his favourite routes, so he's forced to give it fake directions so it takes him in the right direction! It's become a total crutch for him.

I like ours for new journeys but don't need it for normal trips. Its predicted arrival times are nonsense as it ignores traffic except really serious stuff, and we're in London so congestion is everywhere.

"People forget that sat-navs are a new thing to us older folk and we managed quite well without them. If people on here swear by them, fine, but I prefer to use maps."

I drove for many years pre satnavs and manged perfectly well, but I find that when I drive to Leeds these days the road system has changed and there is a lot more traffic, so looking at or memorising directions just isn't practical.

Irritates me too. On familiar journeys I just can't see the point. Even somewhere I'm not familiar with, I have a look at the map before leaving and perhaps note down road numbers and junctions etc. I always have a map in the car/campervan too which proved handy in Wales when the signal for dh's satnav dropped out.

I don't know how you can do a journey umpteen times and not absorb the information around you!

If he felt he needed the satnav on, he should have put it on.

YWNBU to be annoyed that he blamed lack of satnav when he could have chosen to put it on.

I don't know about the M1, but when you are driving south on the M11 the junction says only "M25 for Dartford" right up until juuuuust before the turnoff, and then it says "oh yeah and M25 for Heathrow as well", so it's very easy for someone wanting to go anti-clockwise to assume that that turning is not for them.

I understand, OP. My husband is exactly the same. He has no sense of direction and loves the satnav. However, he has a tendency to follow it slavishly, even when it is obviously wrong. We once had an interesting drive through the mountains of Vermont as a result.

OP I feel your pain! I logged in to have a similar moan but saw you'd beaten me to it!

DH and I have just been to pick up a new car. We live in Oxfordshire and the car was at a dealers just off the North Circular around Chingford way. I drove down there and didn't consult a map; its straight down the m40 and round. Basically, 2 roads.

On the way back I drove the new car and dh drove the old one. We were going in convoy but I said to DH 'if we get separated just follow the north circular round past Wembley and then get on the M40 to Oxford. Lets stop at Beaconsfield services'. Pulling out of the garage onto a busy road (which then meets north circ) and predictably we get split up. I carried on, driving as slowly as I sensibly could to allow him to catch up. Get to the M40 and still no sign of him, so I carry on to the services as planned and wait there. Over 45mins later he rocks up with a face like thunder having turned the wrong way onto the North Circular (which was clearly marked east and west) and ending up halfway to the Dartford tunnel. Then he missed the m40 and ended up in Ealing.

Naturally, all of this is my fault for 'racing off' and not giving him proper directions. The fact that I was really worried something had happened, exacerbated by him having left his phone at home so unable to use that either for directions or to call me, is irrelevant. I'm now in the bath ignoring him until he can be civil to me.

Elk... was he trying to navigate the M25 at the time also?

I feel your pain, OP, had an awful journey recently with a friend who so slavishly followed the satnav that all common sense went out of the window. My dh laughed like a drain when I told him where we ended up.

I look at a map get the general gist of where I am going, then fine tune the directions, never got lost yet.

Travelling through France with family friend, quickest route via Paris, friend wary and planning to go a really long way round to avoid it, dh says to friend "don't worry give emotions the map, she'll get you through Paris", and I did with no wrong turns and in a fraction of the time it would have taken us to do the alternate route.

I've got lost on Mways in the past. You get to a turn off and it says M25 Heathrow one way, Gatwick the other - I don't want either!

I don't use the Sat nav for normal journeys but I do use it further afield. I like to know what time I'm going to arrive and if there's a problem at least I can get round it on unfamiliar roads.

We always did the map and list of roads thing too.

There's a village somewhere with a sign saying NO BRIDGE - SATNAV ERROR but still they get people turning that way because Satnav Said So!

Norfolk's the place for daft or non-existent signposting. I once saw a sign which said "Turn right twice"! Our part of Norfolk is very rural and there are several junctions of tiny lanes just wide enough for one car, with absolutely no signposts, and unless you've got a good sense of direction you'd end up in a field. Though when you find villages called Fustyweed and Little Snoring, and tiny lanes called Nowhere Road and Swash Lane, you certainly remember them. Much more fun than Miss Hypnotic-Voice-Sat-Nav!

Those of you who manage without satnavs when driving on your own through busy city centres, how do you manage to memorise the route?

There is absolutely no way I would drive through the middle of Manchester or Birmingham on my own without a satnav because I would just get completely lost, even if I have a map and set of directions with me.

tallulah that's where a sense of direction comes in, you know whether where you are going is towards Heathrow or Gatwick!

I used to love driving up the A1 when the sign just used to say 'The North'

So actually the issue is that he didn't put the sat nav on when he should have done because he can't remember a route. I'd turn round at the bottom of the M1 and go back up to the M25 rather than use the North circular.

I always have the satnav on because it has traffic alerts, road closures, and reroutes if there's jams. It's useful.

But I do also have a brain and I can overule it.

I'd be lost without the Satnav - I do a lot of city driving to places where I haven't been before. Those of you who use maps - what do you do with them and how do you check them safely when you are on a very busy road coming up to a roundabout, for instance?

I don't like sat nav and refuse to have it, I like my maps. I'm not ancient either!

I'm always a bit shocked that people driving in country areas for work can't use OS maps with farm names, etc. on them. When they attempt to deliver or visit whoever they're looking for, sometimes they end up at my house, you give them directions and you can see their little brains are not taking them in. So you kindly write down the directions for them and off they go and you know full well that they aren't even going to look at them and just give up.

Its not exactly hard to learn to read a map, I use them so often to me the inability to use a map seems a bit like admitting to being unable to read and write!