If I knew where bloody east was...

[villainousbroodmare]

Is there anything more annoying than hearing the disembodied satnav voice instruct "Head east!" in a sprightly tone? For fuck's sake, if I knew which way east was at this moment, do you think I would be consulting a sat nav?

And worse, when it takes a moment, evidently decides it's talking nonsense and amends it to "Head north!" or "Make a U turn!"

As ye were...

A few years ago, during a hellish journey (roadworks, closed motorway due to an accident, vomiting children, etc), my satnav kept insisting I did a u turn. I was on the motorway at the time. Came off the motorway to try turn round, and the bastard thing tried to take me back on the motorway.
I threw it out of the window while calling it names.
Then had to go back and get it when I remembered it was borrowed from dm.
Found my own way home, no thanks to the fucking useless bit of shitty technology.

My biggest pet peeve is when you go past the road you need to turn down and it says "turn left" just as you miss it

YANBU! That really annoys me too. And it always says it on a cloudy day when you have no hope of determining where East is from the position of the sun!

When I was at uni a supposedly clever friend drove us up to Alton Towers with his new sat nav.

I say “supposedly clever” as he then suddenly morphed into a mindless automaton and slave to the sat nav, ignoring all road signs & common sense. (He was usually a good driver!)

We went the wrong way round two (thankfully deserted) roundabouts and all around various industrial estates, even when we got close & Alton Towers was clearly signposted.

We all knew we were meant to be on the motorway when we first left Birmingham so that should have been a warning 😂

I refused to have one when DW's best mate took us 10 miles to the motorway by following her satnav. It's 2 miles by the direct B-road route.

its the way she say street names that annoys me

im miles away,using maps my phone to get me to a destination,which is usually a holiday place

i dont know the bloody area so dont know that that is soso street

just tell me bloody left or right

I'm assuming you people don't remember trying to navigate by having the A-Z open on the passenger seat and praying that the next lights would turn red so that you might have ten seconds to have a quick look before the driver behind, who already thought you were a halfwit, started honking. Even if you got a quick glance, there was no nice blue dot, and trying to work out where you were, never mind which way you should be going, was just about impossible. Satnav is an absolute godsend!

Is there anything more annoying than hearing the disembodied satnav voice instruct "Head east!" in a sprightly tone? For fuck's sake, if I knew which way east was at this moment, do you think I would be consulting a sat nav?

Well, it's opposite west, silly

SatNags annoy me when they try to send you the wrong way down a one way street, then keep telling you to make a U turn when you ignore it.
I'm surprised it doesn't start shouting in a panicked voice in the end.

On a particular stretch of a motorway that i use sometimes, it keeps telling me to turn right!!
Cos yep, i'm really really gonna crash through the central reservation, cross 4-5 lanes of traffic and over a field for you to tell me 'You have reached your destination'
Met my bloody maker more like if i follow your bloody daft directions woman!

My 8yo held her tongue as I followed our Satnav directions 40 minutes out of our way, into rural backwaters (there were actual goats). She said nothing as I swore at the Voice for several kms.

Finally I hear her say, quietly, ‘Maybe they should invent a book with maps to show you how to get to places in a straight line.’

Mind you, she’s also the kid who tells me to change the voice on the satnav, because ‘the lady is better at directions’!

I swear my Satnav just randomly has a penchant for roundabouts, so merrily leads my off freeways to indulge itself. And the way it tells me something I don’t need to know, 8km before I get there, but not that I need to turn right in 200mtres, with a turning lane that’s backed up with traffic for 300mtres!

My partner has a sat nav. He will follow it blindly even though Google maps is far more accurate. We came off the motorway at Birmingham once to avoid traffic and for ten miles it kept trying to send us back up a different motorway to rejoin the traffic jam.
I was looking at Google maps on my phone saying ignore the sat nav, keep going . He was panicking saying 'its telling me to go back, if you are wrong we'll get lost'.

My dh finds it hilarious that I will blindly follow the satnav and not check the road signs.
I’ve gone around the same loop 3 times before before noticing that something isn’t quite right 🤦‍♀️

My satnav goes red and shouts at me YOU’RE GOING THE WRONG WAY DOWN A ONE WAY STREET

This particular street is in my town and hasn’t been one way for over 10 years - interestingly she only does it randomly, not every time

But Loopy why do you do that? Part of being a driver is being aware of your surroundings and making active decisions. Genuinely unclear why. Also yy to Google maps being miles better than a sat nav.. Automatically updates and is 'live'.

Jeez I could have written your thread OP. I only really use Google maps on my phone when I'm somewhere new, that I've never been. So the bastard thing squawking at me to "head north towards A456" is as much use as a dose of chickenpox. Bastard thing.

My dh finds it hilarious that I will blindly follow the satnav and not check the road signs

One person's hilarious is another person's ridiculous (and downright dangerous).

Sat Navs are Ok if they are a) set u properly b) are updated and c) used as guidance not the law

I he that it is difficult to reset them half way through a journey for whatever reason, I hate that they rarely give you a general map overview rather than just the route they wan you to take so if you need to amend the route you are clueless without a map or google maps, I hate the ridiculous voices they use, I hate that mine is consistently wrong about the speed limits but I understand that as the signage on our roads is utter crud

My satnav sent us to the wrong side of the river Mersey in Liverpool when we were catching the ferry to Ireland. We ended up asking people in a panic and arrived just as they were about to close the gates.
She (yes, I know) doesn't get Scotland at all. One example is when we're heading towards Moffat, as evidenced by signs, and she insists we turn the other way. For miles.
She is also very funny about Glastonbury, and prefers to go round it, not into it.

We went to Liverpool a few months ago. Trying to find the car park our satnav told us to go down one road then changed its mind and said we needed to go down another. Too late, we had to go under the river, pay the toll for doing so, turn around and bloody go back again. That was an expensive wrong turn. Luckily the kind man at the toll booth let us back through for free!

Before that, several years ago, a different satnav took us up and down the mountains in Cumbria along that Wry Nose Pass. It killed the car.

It's the leylines confusing it Giggorata!
I remember well the outcry about wi-fi coming to Glastonbury so it is obviously the natives repelling the evil satnav 😊
I sound as though I am mocking, I honestly am not. I love Glastonbury so much.

Re satnav, my daughter is directionally challenged so getting to an interview in Cardiff recently was interesting. We could see the building but the one way system wasn't co-operating at all. The satnav insisted we were there, after taking us through an area of recycling/scrap yards. I had to get out and ask a human at a nearby college before we successfully arrived. We were the wrong side of the building and there was no vehicular access or parking. Not the stress-free morning we had envisaged.

She got the job, despite the efforts of satnav to sabotage. 😊

Dh used the sat nav on a touring holiday through France. It took us over mountains and down little tracks to our destinations with with no regard for how steep the roads were and dh didn't think to check beforehand even though we were towing a fucking caravan. It was a bloody struggle but the scenery was fantastic

I don't find google maps any better, in fact I find its directions more confusing than the actual satnav's. Also, despite it being constantly updated and "live", there is a road local to me that leads to a dead end. Google insists you go down that road to get to the main road where, in actual fact, you should carry on and just turn right at the roundabout.

I used to use the a-z street maps and write myself a list of directions from it in big letters and then hang it from the centre console. I actually remembered routes so much better with that method so maybe I ought to go back to it!

Back in the 70's you could get a printed itinerary from the AA; it was a notepad with directions-you just flipped the pages as you got to a section; and could reverse it to come home. We used it to get from Brighton to the Lake District, and it was brilliant.

I derive much innocent pleasure from winding up my satnav.
A particular joy is driving over the new Forth Bridge. Madam satnav doesn’t know it exists, and panics as she shows me apparently hovering over deep water, then driving through roadless ploughed fields!
She also tries to send me on a long and congested route through Edinburgh, when I know the shorter rat runs. It’s hilarious to listen to her get increasingly frantic:
“At the next junction, turn right. Turn right now. Turn right!” Pause for recalculation of route. “At the next junction turn right. Turn right. TURN RIGHT!” Huffy silence, then “Make a U turn...”
This continues until I’m at my destination, when she grudgingly admits, through gritted teeth, that I have arrived!
Perhaps I’m just the wrong generation, but I much prefer looking at my route in advance on an actual map, jotting down the road numbers and junctions in large print on a sheet of A4 and keeping it beside me if required. Having a rough idea of the general direction of travel helps too!

@sueelleker I remember those, my dad used to get them sent and I was in charge of navigating. My mother is notorious for her complete lack of any sense of direction whatsoever!

Ironically I am utterly rubbish at knowing my left from my right but give me a map or a place to get to, and we will get there! I am an excellent navigator so long as you don't surprise me with a Left or Right question.

My googlemaps lady sulks, if I ignore her and follow a sign, and it's not the way she wants to go she goes quiet for ages in a "I don't know why you bother with me if you know best" manner

And weirdly she won't say anything for ages on the motorway, and dh will ask something about the next junction, or services, so I 'll look and tell him and ALWAYS within about 30 seconds she will pipe up with her directions. ....and it's not just because it is getting close, we have tested her by deliberately asking ages in advance when normally she'd not be saying anything ....she is bossy!

lol @babdoc ...dh's motorbike satnav is very old and out of date and often panics about new roads too :o It came with the bike and he tried to update it but Garmin stole his money and did not update! (he did get a refund eventually!)