Safe Speed Forums

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl? ... 04/2148215

I've got a setting on my satnav to tell it I'm a truck, I use it when I don't want to travel on country lanes, works rather well actually.

My 4 year old Garmin StreetPilot has the ability to tell it I'm driving various kinds of vehicle, from memory it has:

Pedestrian: presumably one way streets dont apply, can cross fields, cant use motorways
Car: (default)
Bus: I would be very worried if this function was ever used.
Truck: Avoids crappy little roads
Taxi: Can use bus lanes and presumably one way streets dont apply

Admittedly that thing cost 4 times as much as what TomToms cost now, but that's not really unusual for technology over 4 years.

How about we just encourage drivers of large vehicles to buy a more appropriate satnav?

Having seen the quality of some of the systems out these days, I'm starting to understand the anti-satnav argument. I had a recovery truck with a VDO Dayton system come to pick my car up from Liverpool about a year ago and take it to derbyshire. His satnav took him the wrong way out of my road, into a cul-de-sac, told him to do a U turn, turn left then do a right turn at a no right turn T junction (where the correct direction was actually left anyway). Fearing for my car, I got my Garmin out, pointed out that I have the correct destination marked already and that his postcode routing wont find it as it's in the middle of a field and let the driver use that instead.

His satnav wanted to take the cat and fiddle. I put mine into truck mode and it took us via M62->M1

So yeah, buy a Garmin, not a Tomtom if you drive a truck, please!

Ha, that would be so funny if one of the residents wanted to get home.

Would the DVLA still be able to say "we know where your car is "??

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lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

If you substitute "bus" with "charter coach going somewhere the driver has never been before", would that be any less worrying?




That surprises me, given how good the 1997-vintage Philips satnav (which became VDO Dayton not long afterwards) I had in my last Omega was - with a solid grounding in vehicle navigation systems like that, I would have thought their later designs would be at least as reliable.

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Chris