These kinds of discussions always remind me of a friend who swears by GPS and seems to always choose it even if the route is simple and easy to navigate. Once when travelling with him, we'd have ended up going north instead of south on a motorway if I hadn't told him to switch lanes because the navigation software failed to give the instructions.
Nothing dangerous happened -- we'd just have wasted time having to turn back at the next intersection -- so it wasn't really serious. It still baffles me how or why someone would literally become so reliant on mechanical instructions that they neither see the clear direction signs nor seem to pay any other attention to directional clues or the fact that the southward branch was approaching. (It's often hard to tell in a complex intersection where you need to turn in order to get into a particular direction, but this case was fairly obvious.)
I can also see how a sudden reaction to a late navigational instruction could cause dangerous situations.
I understand the convenience when travelling to unfamiliar places but I'm not really that keen on having GPS entirely replace directional awareness of one's surroundings.
I'm surprised when I take a day trip with someone (e.g. hiking somewhere), and after using the GPS to get there, they also use it to get back.
Personally, I can remember the last bit of the car journey and it's easily reversed. Then I just follow the "Copenhagen" signs until I'm near enough the city that I know my own way home. It's nicer than having a robot voice interrupt us every few minutes with "Take the left two lanes to continue on the motorway to Copenhagen".
>It still baffles me how or why someone would literally become so reliant on mechanical instructions
The challenge is that it can be hard to simultaneously navigate by some combination of signs, instinct, and memorized route and follow directions being fed to you (whether by a computer or a person). This is not always the case of course but often there is some ambiguity so you just do what you're "told" if you don't know the area.
Nothing dangerous happened -- we'd just have wasted time having to turn back at the next intersection -- so it wasn't really serious. It still baffles me how or why someone would literally become so reliant on mechanical instructions that they neither see the clear direction signs nor seem to pay any other attention to directional clues or the fact that the southward branch was approaching. (It's often hard to tell in a complex intersection where you need to turn in order to get into a particular direction, but this case was fairly obvious.)
I can also see how a sudden reaction to a late navigational instruction could cause dangerous situations.
I understand the convenience when travelling to unfamiliar places but I'm not really that keen on having GPS entirely replace directional awareness of one's surroundings.