Edmunds Members - Cars and Conversations

PF_Flyer

When we moved to PA and I joined a rifle club, one of the old timers would give directions to other ranges for matches...

"Go down that road until you pass the half filled swimming pool..."

The accuracy of those directions were dependent on month of the year

ab348

I tried using the Nav in the ATS to do turn by turn to get somewhere I didn't know how to find from my starting point. I once again really struggled with it. I couldn't hear the Nav voice over the music because it didn't mute it enough and I couldn't find a control to change that. I was being stubborn because I figured that should be easy to do but not for me. Then when I got close to the destination I decided I didn't want to go there and the thing wouldn't shut up and I found it hard to find how to turn it off.

I swear I'm not making this stuff up. I just seem allergic to navigation systems.

oldfarmer50

ab348 said:

I tried using the Nav in the ATS to do turn by turn to get somewhere I didn't know how to find from my starting point. I once again really struggled with it. I couldn't hear the Nav voice over the music because it didn't mute it enough and I couldn't find a control to change that. I was being stubborn because I figured that should be easy to do but not for me. Then when I got close to the destination I decided I didn't want to go there and the thing wouldn't shut up and I found it hard to find how to turn it off.

I swear I'm not making this stuff up. I just seem allergic to navigation systems.

Sometime (when the trauma wears off) I’ll tell you about the drama I just experienced with my internet provider trying to tell me why my old email account could no longer be accessed. :@

imidazol97

I'm glad to see all the responses about GPS.

I'm going to check how my phone is set to show the diagram when in GPS mode.

imidazol97

stickguy said:

Make sure phone maps is set to show your direction as always up. Default is show north, and it gets confusing when your virtual car is heading down on the screen!

I'll try to find that setting on my Android with Google Maps giving directions. Another exploration into my feeling dumb, dumber, and dumbest. Some of these menus and settings on the phone are difficult to find.

suydam

My Nav in the Volt is terrific. It’s actually a little loud but we don’t mind. And the music mutes when she talks. I refuse to pay for an update bc I think GM should provide it, and so far it’s fine. We always have Google Maps on my phone as backup.

stickguy

I have Navi in the TLX. looks antiquated compared to google maps thru Carplay (on the same screen). Also a lot more hassle trying to enter an address. and the one time I did use it (to go from one store to another, about 3 miles away. and it couldn't seem to find it.

I only use it when I need to see the map without navigating, and don't want to fish out my phone and plug it in. that I don't normally do unless I specifically am using it to get some place. easier to just flip the display over to the map.

berri

Nav is nice to have, but I still have a compass mirror in each vehicle. Maybe it goes back to my military-days, but I think it gives a little insight allowing a quicker realization when the Nav is messing up (and sometimes they do, although not as much as a few years ago).

PS - I also always have a map available as well.

driver100

suydam said:

My Nav in the Volt is terrific. It’s actually a little loud but we don’t mind. And the music mutes when she talks. I refuse to pay for an update bc I think GM should provide it, and so far it’s fine. We always have Google Maps on my phone as backup.

To turn down the GPS ladies voice, you can try pressing to put your NAV unit ON, and then using the volume control. In the MB that is how it works to control the volume for navigation.
The music or radio always fades to near zero when the NAV lady is talking.

driver100

Lately Mrs D sets her phone to maps...I think it is called WAYS.
Between the E400's GPS and WAYS it all works well. Hers is more detailed and tells you if there is something up ahead, once it was an accident, once it was a truck parked on the side of the road, once it was a dead animal on the road.....it would be good if it gave more details.

berri

Maybe that is named "Waze"? <y one kid swears by it.

explorerx4

Have mentioned this before, but having factory nav, when the low fuel light comes on, the nav starts displaying gas stations.
It also has a traffic feature, but not as good as WAZE.
We go over our data limit on our family phone plan by a gig or so every few months.
Still much cheaper than unlimited for all 4 of us.

cdnpinhead

imidazol97 said:

Another exploration into my feeling dumb, dumber, and dumbest. Some of these menus and settings on the phone are difficult to find.

I'm with you regarding unfamiliar menus. I have a mantra regarding Microsoft in general and Office in particular regarding updates (and it seems to apply to most software or internet sites): "everything's different, and nothing is better." I don't see the point, but I'm way past being the target demographic for much of anything. My wife's Android "smart" phone blessed her with a major update two days before we left on this five-week journey, and it's been a trip watching her try to do the routine stuff that was easy a few days earlier. Generally it's best to leave the vicinity while the more distressing events are happening, but when it's in the car. . .

Anyway, that said, part of why I like Garmin is that I've invested the time it takes to understand their changes, and there haven't been too many. Point being, pick a nav system that gives you what you want and stick with it long enough to learn the weirdnesses and hopefully to understand the updates.

Good luck.

berri

I have a mantra regarding Microsoft in general and Office in particular regarding updates (and it seems to apply to most software or internet sites): "everything's different, and nothing is better."

Man, that hits the nail on the head. Generally, each version Office I've used is more hassle than the prior and sadly, generally no noticeable improvement. Just cr*p thrown in to bog time down. Like so many other things, now Microsoft has discovered the corporate cash and profit windfall called "subscription". Everything seems to be going to lease or subscribe sucking cash for years out of consumer pockets.

sda

PS - I also always have a map available as well.

Map? What?

cdnpinhead

Having an old-fashioned road atlas covering the U.S. and Canada along for the ride is a major plus. My wife enjoys being able to see the big picture while I'm being directed with very focused map information. Plus, if the whole GPS thing goes tango uniform for one reason or another, there's a backup.

I still can't bear to throw away all the state, regional and provincial maps I collected over 30 years before the advent of the GPS. I have thinned them out, though, and am now only keeping the ones that I wrote notes on.

ab348

My ineptitude with nav is doubly embarrassing considering I was always good at navigating on vacation trips for my parents, using paper gas station maps, and later in life seemed to have a 6th sense of direction even in unfamiliar places. That’s all disappeared.

It’s not an issue with the ATS nav system either. While the written directions in Google maps are easy enough, using the controls and commands on the map interface is baffling to me. And don’t even get me started on using Streetview on the iPhone/iPad.

tjc78

stickguy said:

I have Navi in the TLX. looks antiquated compared to google maps thru Carplay (on the same screen). Also a lot more hassle trying to enter an address. and the one time I did use it (to go from one store to another, about 3 miles away. and it couldn't seem to find it. I only use it when I need to see the map without navigating, and don't want to fish out my phone and plug it in. that I don't normally do unless I specifically am using it to get some place. easier to just flip the display over to the map.

The Nav in the Enclave is pretty good, but occasionally I prefer WAZE if heading to a high traffic area (like my recent trip to Staten Island.)

That Car doesn’t have carplay so what I’ll do is listen to Pandora through the stereo then WAZE voice instructions also play through the car.  I leave the Enclave’s map up to see the upcoming streets. 

Works pretty well and almost integrated. 

The Elantra has CarPlay so that’s perfect with WAZE, or Google Maps as you know. 

roadburner

The Clubman, M235i, and X1 all have navigation. The Clubman's decade old system is pretty crude, but I really like the systems in the two BMWs- especially the 2er. I'm out of town at an accident reconstruction seminar and we had to drive to a site where a crash was going to be staged. I entered the address into my phone and sent it to the car- and the nav directed me there with no issues at all. There's a secondary navigation display in the instrument cluster so I never use audible directions- although my wife does prefer to use it in her X1. A big plus is the Real Time Traffic Information(RTTI); it's accurate and I often use the nav around town in order to get the traffic data.

driver100

berri said:

Maybe that is named "Waze"?

Probably....I haven't seen it, but, now that you mention it, she does call it WAZE with a Z.

jmonroe1

driver100 said:

Lately Mrs D sets her phone to maps...I think it is called WAYS.
Between the E400's GPS and WAYS it all works well. Hers is more detailed and tells you if there is something up ahead, once it was an accident, once it was a truck parked on the side of the road, once it was a dead animal on the road.....it would be good if it gave more details.

How much in the way of details do you want? Something like:

Accident ahead: A guy in a Benz stopped for a yellow light and a garbage truck rear ended him. Looks like the Benz is totaled, fortunately no one was hurt. Minor scratch to the front bumper of the garbage truck.

Truck parked on side of road: Truck is well off the road onto the berm. Just a small back-up because of rubber neckers.

Dead animal on road: Appears to be a ground hog; to which Mrs. Driver says, "I was wondering what to make for dinner tonight. Pull over when you get up there".

More is not always better.

jmonroe

fintail

Never had an issue with factory nav in a MB, other than it not recognizing a very rural road here and there. I recall a rented Jaguar in Germany had a system that loved to take you on weird paths and to wrong destinations. I've never owned a standalone system, it's either built-in or phone for me.

stickguy

the Navi in the land rover I rented in Ireland was apparently set to offroad mode or something. Because that sent me down some serious goat paths.

Michaell

stickguy said:

the Navi in the land rover I rented in Ireland was apparently set to offroad mode or something. Because that sent me down some serious goat paths.

So far as you know, those were roads.

tjc78

My 2012 LaCrosse put me down a very questionable dirt road in Salem county South Jersey a few years back. 

After that incident my wife never used it again.  

ab348

I live on a residential street that that runs N-S which parallels a fairly major artery one block west, which itself turns to connect with my street two blocks north. There is also a golf course up the street from me a few blocks to the south. For people either missing the proper connection to the artery or visiting the golf course, there are a few cars, probably non-locals, that end up on my street wanting to connect to the artery.

My house is on a corner with a 4-way stop, and the street that runs E-W at my corner dead-ends heading E into the golf course boundary fence on my block. I've noticed just the last few years a surprising number of cars making the right turn into the dead-end part, which then have to pull into a driveway to reverse direction and then continue as they were originally toward the connection to the artery. This never happened in the first number of years I lived here and I couldn't figure it out at first until I realized they were likely using (more accurately, misreading) their nav systems. It is easily 3 or 4 a day, sometimes many more. I find it remarkable. Of course a simple street directional sign would eliminate that but it hasn't been a problem since this was all built back in the 1950s, until recently. Progress!

tjc78

It is safe to say that a good majority of newer drivers will not know how to get anywhere without GPS.

kyfdx

No doubt about that. Just try asking an Uber driver anything about their city. Clueless.

graphicguy

sda said:

Newport is an up and coming area...actually, it’s got the “cool” cachet going on right now. Plus, it’s the home to my favorite bar......

https://www.newberrybroscoffee.com/home

That looks like my kind of place. For my birthday last month, big 60, my wife gave me a bottle of Woodford Reserve. It is smooth with good flavor.

I’d be up for that. Get @kyfdx to join us, too. Maybe get @roadburner to do a road trip to meet us. We could have dinner at Pompillios (restaurant where they filmed part of RAINMAN), which is the next block over.

I know the owners of Newberry’s. Really cool people. Husband’s a lawyer, who bought this place. Used to be an old time gas station with two bays/lifts. The old retail side of the station was converted to a coffee/pastry cafe, which his wife runs. Allegedly, the bourbon bar side (converted service bays) has the largest selection of bourbons in the world. The husband left his legal practice to run that part.

As an aside, the husband is considering campaigning to take Mitch McConnel’s seat in the Senate.

Great people...cool cafe/bar.

kyfdx

In between, it was a shoe store.

I'm not a bourbon drinker, so not really my kind of place, but it is pretty cool.

graphicguy

kyfdx said:

In between, it was a shoe store.

I'm not a bourbon drinker, so not really my kind of place, but it is pretty cool.

Didn’t know that!

PF_Flyer

There is ALWAYS an atlas in our vehicles. The battery never goes dead in it and it can't lose a satellite signal

kyfdx

graphicguy said:

kyfdx said:

In between, it was a shoe store.

I'm not a bourbon drinker, so not really my kind of place, but it is pretty cool.

Didn’t know that!

I don't think it's been a gas station since the '50s or '60s. It was already a shoe store in the '80s. Sort of an independent DSW type of place. For probably 20 years, at least. Back when there was retail in small city downtowns.

imidazol97

We always traveled with maps and atlases in the car. Our son learned to use them at an early age.

I believe that using the paper version of maps increases spatial awareness, especially compared to youngsters who never traveled and/or only had a small phone or small gps screen's view of the wide world around where they are traveling on a highway. This ties into math ability along with science understanding and perceptions.

oldfarmer50

imidazol97 said:

We always traveled with maps and atlases in the car. Our son learned to use them at an early age.

I believe that using the paper version of maps increases spatial awareness, especially compared to youngsters who never traveled and/or only had a small phone or small gps screen's view of the wide world around where they are traveling on a highway. This ties into math ability along with science understanding and perceptions.

I always used maps and never had a problem. I realized how obsolete those were when I was teaching my niece to drive about 7-8 years ago and decided to show her how to plan a trip with this neat computer invention called Map Quest.

She patiently waited while I printed out the route information and then informed me “you know, I can get all that stuff on my phone”.

I felt old.

snakeweasel

houdini2 said:

fintail said:

I like that last line, reminds me of something Red Green would say. Around here, houses that are perfectly fine are often teardowns, as they are deemed out of style and not able to be updated.

That would be a big expense for nothing as the engineer would recommend that you immediately tear the house down. This is not a fixer upper, it is a tearer downer.

Red Green would have fixed it with duct tape.

As for tearing down perfectly good homes and rebuilding there is this one neighborhood by me. It's just big house after big house all built up to the legal limit of the property line. Just one big house after another with very little ground in between. Except for one tiny bungalow on a big lot with plenty of land around it somewhere in the middle of all that.

Best guess is this was a post war subdivision and that one home is the last holdout. I would guess when its sold it will be torn down and two mcmansions will take its place.

My wife forces me to watch HG TV with her, and sometimes I think a house that they spend $100,000. on looked better in the before pics.

My wife thinks she forces me to watch HGTV, but in reality I am watching something good on my tablet.

Michaell

When I traveled for business in the 1990's (before smart phones and NAV systems), I would load a software program from Microsoft called "Streets & Maps" onto my laptop.

jmonroe1

kyfdx said:

In between, it was a shoe store.

I'm not a bourbon drinker, so not really my kind of place, but it is pretty cool.

I always thought you had a problem, this proves it !!

jmonroe

snakeweasel

berri said:

Nav is nice to have, but I still have a compass mirror in each vehicle. Maybe it goes back to my military-days, but I think it gives a little insight allowing a quicker realization when the Nav is messing up (and sometimes they do, although not as much as a few years ago). PS - I also always have a map available as well.

I remember as a youth me and my dad taking a vacation with me as the navigator reading the map. I often wonder how many of the younger generations knows how to properly read a map.

suydam

imidazol97 said:

We always traveled with maps and atlases in the car. Our son learned to use them at an early age.

I believe that using the paper version of maps increases spatial awareness, especially compared to youngsters who never traveled and/or only had a small phone or small gps screen's view of the wide world around where they are traveling on a highway. This ties into math ability along with science understanding and perceptions.

Sucks to use — and dangerous — when you’re the sole driver. Many of them are out of date too. I prefer my phone or Nav with voice directions.

ruking1

oldfarmer50 said:

imidazol97 said:

We always traveled with maps and atlases in the car. Our son learned to use them at an early age.

I believe that using the paper version of maps increases spatial awareness, especially compared to youngsters who never traveled and/or only had a small phone or small gps screen's view of the wide world around where they are traveling on a highway. This ties into math ability along with science understanding and perceptions.

I always used maps and never had a problem. I realized how obsolete those were when I was teaching my niece to drive about 7-8 years ago and decided to show her how to plan a trip with this neat computer invention called Map Quest.

She patiently waited while I printed out the route information and then informed me “you know, I can get all that stuff on my phone”.

I felt old.

So when the phone goes dead, breaks, gets lost...?

It’s amazing to me, in this “Digital Age” how many instances of folks getting lost & getting close to, up to dying there are. Why are we launching helicopters, planes & search parties, other emergency services, with taxpayers picking up the $$’s tab, because of the utter lack of doing BASIC navigation: north, south, east, west?

stickguy

I go really old school in the RDX. Map out on the computer, then write turn by turn on a post it note and stick it on the dash.

To me, key is always look at route in advance. Google maps, atlas, whatever. But that gives you a feel for directions, distances, and how places relate.

tjc78

Yeah I’ll hit “turn list” in the Nav to see what it is going to tell me.  Then I’ll adjust what I know until I’m in the area I’m not familiar with.  

imidazol97

suydam said:

imidazol97 said:

We always traveled with maps and atlases in the car. Our son learned to use them at an early age.

I believe that using the paper version of maps increases spatial awareness, especially compared to youngsters who never traveled and/or only had a small phone or small gps screen's view of the wide world around where they are traveling on a highway. This ties into math ability along with science understanding and perceptions.

Sucks to use — and dangerous — when you’re the sole driver. Many of them are out of date too. I prefer my phone or Nav with voice directions.

Agree. But like with phones, you needed to pull over so you can focus on the map and the planning just as you should do when dialing and talking on a phone.

I still look at maps before traveling to judge the over route and then verify that TomTom was taking the route I wanted. Sometimes it planned something else. However, the maps are usually on my computer. I have printed out the map and the step-by-step directions mapquest or others give.

But the atlas and couple state maps are in the car.

I have had a couple bad experiences trying to use my phone for directions. Once in Dublin and once in Centerville, looking for the Whole Foods store, lol.

stickguy

I ignore Navi all the time if I prefer going a different way. At least when I know where I am!

PF_Flyer

If I'm going someplace I've never been, I'll look at Google street view images before making the trip. Always nice to have some landmarks to orient myself to

sda

We still keep an atlas in the map pocket in the Pilot. I remember having AAA send me a trip tik (?) that folded out length wise which high lighted the planned trip step by step. We have a Garmin and use apps on our smartphones.

28firefighter

I navigate using the north star and other celestial markers. My drive to Bellevue took 3 days last week.

tjc78

Once in Dublin and once in Centerville, looking for the Whole Foods store, lol.

Funny to hear you speak of those towns. We opened a location in Centerville last year and I'm getting ready to kickoff one in Dublin. Nice areas (or at least seemed that way when I visited last year)

snakeweasel

28firefighter said:

I navigate using the north star and other celestial markers. My drive to Bellevue took 3 days last week.

If you navigate by the stars shouldn't you say your drive to Bellevue took 3 nights?