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Transportation Technology

The No-GPS Road Trip (popularmechanics.com) 276

Posted by msmash from the struggle-ensues dept.
Ezra Dyer, a reporter at Popular Mechanics, decided to ditch the GPS system he has on his car and the mapping service on his phone to see how hard it could be to go to North Carolina from his home, Louisville, Kentucky. He shares his experience: I begin downtown, by the river. It seems that if I get on 32 East, I can find Route 150 toward Tennessee. It takes about one block for my plan to fall apart. The street I'm on dead-ends and forces me onto a seemingly parallel road that soon wanders off at an angle. I discover that there's the fancy, Kentucky Derby side of Louisville, but also the Thorobred Lounge gentleman's club side. Somehow, I blunder onto Interstate 264, a ring road, where the exit numbers indicate that I'm at least ten miles from where I thought I was. And yet, it works out. See, this is the way you used to do it. You keep driving. I exit for Route 32 and settle in for a long drive east. I aim to make it to Knoxville by dinner without having any real idea of whether that's possible. It doesn't help that my atlas crams all of Kentucky onto two pages, printed with fonts evidently developed by those calligraphers who can write the Magna Carta on a piece of capellini. So I stop at a gas station to buy a local map. There are none to be found, so I pull into the next gas station. Then a third. In my mind's eye, there are metal racks at every gas station, over near the door, stocked with maps. Well, those don't exist anymore. I don't know when they disappeared, but they're gone. "Try Walmart," says one cashier, as if I could find it. About an hour in, I'm in traffic-clogged strip-mall hell, stoplights to the horizon. The upside is that I have no concept of time. Instead of compulsively checking a screen to anguish over my plight, I drive. I'm curiously peaceful. I can't do anything about the traffic, so I exist in it, placid. And eventually it gives way, the stoplights dissipating into lush Kentucky countryside. The Defender is happy to amble along at 55 mph, so amble I do, down to Route 150 toward the Tennessee border. Read the full story here.
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The No-GPS Road Trip More

The No-GPS Road Trip

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  • Uh.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Monday August 07, 2017 @02:28PM (#54957759) Journal
    That's basically how I still do all my road trips. Get out the paper maps!

    • REI (Score:2)

      by sycodon ( 149926 )

      REI still hawks and provides a course on using a compass. They charge quite a bit for it and push it pretty hard in all their emails.

      But the REI stores don't carry paper Topo navigation maps anymore. All the store help knows is "get a Garmin".

    • Although I do all my road trips mostly using my phone maps, I always carry an atlas of the U.S. when driving and have had to use it at times when I visited some small cities far from the highway and had to go on to new destinations I could not look up...

    • Re:Uh.... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Oswald McWeany ( 2428506 ) on Monday August 07, 2017 @03:23PM (#54958195)

      That's basically how I still do all my road trips. Get out the paper maps!

      I almost never use GPS on my phone because I have very little data plan. (actually I have a decent data plan, but I share it with my wife, and she uses 90% of it up in the first week of every month).

      It's nice to get out of a bind, but if I'm planning a trip, I do it the same way I always have. I look at a map (nowadays on a computer) before I leave. Memorise my route- and leave.

      If I have to make more than a dozen turns on unfamiliar roads, I'll print off, or hand write the directions down. You'll be surprised how you learn routes better when you're not relying on GPS. Next time you make the trip you have it committed in memory instead of having to look it up again.

      • Yeah. When I go to a place and only rely on GPS, I don't end up knowing that place any better than before I arrived.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by b0bby ( 201198 )

        You seem to be happy with maps, but if you want, you can install Here We Go maps on your phone for free, and download the areas you want for offline use. I've used it in Europe and it was very useful. Google Maps will also cache for offline use, but when I first tried it it was buggy and Here worked so that's what I stick with.

        Waze, for the traffic around me, would be worth upgrading my data plan for ;)

        • I've had good luck with Google Maps caching, when it offers to cache my route. But it only does that when I'm actually at the point of departure. I suppose I could use Fake GPS to make it look like I'm somewhere else for the purpose of pre-caching, otherwise I can only start cached journeys in locations with wi-fi if I don't have cellular internet.

      • >I almost never use GPS on my phone because I have very little data plan

        Google maps lets you offline a section of a map, great if you don't have coverage.

        google howto @ Download areas and navigate offline [google.com]

    • Written directions haven't failed me yet.

    • When I lived in CA - both Los Angeles and Santa Clara Valley, AAA paper maps was what I used. Was really straightforward, since CA typically has a grid like road system - one knows which roads run in parallel, and which ones perpendicular, and can mentally plot a drive from, say, Topanga/Victory to Winnetka/Ventura.

      However, when I moved to the East coast 3 years ago, I decided to order an in-unit GPS system on the car I bought. Couldn't have made a better decision. It made Charlotte easy to explore,

    • You don't even need a paper map. You just need to have an idea of where you're going, an understanding of geography and have a slight sense of adventure.

      I used to wander around the midwest, sans maps, visiting family the summer before I went to college. If you've hit an ocean you're too far east/west way or the other. Mexico too far south, Canada too far north. Signs on the road are informative enough to get you where you're going.

  • Oh. My. God! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Frosty Piss ( 770223 ) * on Monday August 07, 2017 @02:31PM (#54957779)

    No GPS, only maps? Are you insane? THAT'S A SUICIDE MISSION!

  • If only (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MrLint ( 519792 ) on Monday August 07, 2017 @02:32PM (#54957783) Journal

    there was some kinda of paper navigation tool you could fold up and keep in the glove box. Or perhaps even a book of said previous things.....

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Fly Swatter ( 30498 )
      If only you had bothered to read the summary. A quarter of it is all about that.

      • Last time I checked, which was in January, every damn truck stop still had Rand Mcnally maps and atlases. The big ones like Love's, Pilot, and Flying J are almost always a great place to stop. Clean bathrooms and decent food, as well as pretty much anything you may need for Phone / tablet / maps / or quite a lot of other things. Including magnifying glasses for his apparently decrepit eyes, since he claims to have had an atlas but "couldn't read the small print". Either buy a decent atlas for emergencies or

    • We used to buy the Thomas Guide [wikipedia.org] for our local region every few years. We might only need it once or twice a year, but on those occasions it was indispensable.

      Really, the main difference between then and now is - back then, you needed to pull over to consult the map. It was slightly inconvenient, but not a particularly big deal.

    • Don't forget the compass, watch, sextant and sight reduction tables...

    • How can they live? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by s.petry ( 762400 ) on Monday August 07, 2017 @03:34PM (#54958305)

      Not that long ago (a bit more than a decade or so) Cars didn't have GPS. Long before we had them at all, I used to drive regularly from Detroit to DC and Texas. I could even make it back from those destinations! :O

      When I moved from Detroit to CA, I planned my route with maps and drove based on my instructions with maps as a backup. I can tell East from West by looking at the Sun, so I can tell if I'm going the right direction. All of this stuff used to be 2nd nature to people. Now I have to read about some person's heroic effort to travel about 500 miles? Really?

  • We drove about 6000 miles up and down the middle of the US this summer and it felt good to turn off the GPS and just follow the road signs every once in a while. It doesn't really feel like you're totally connected with the road when you're just waiting for Google to tell you when to turn next (or when to just stay on the road you're on which is does too frequently). The road signs really do a good job of getting you around but it might not the the absolute fastest route like Google does. Still, I prefer i

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gfxguy ( 98788 )

      I drove from east coast to west coast several times before people could buy GPS systems, let alone use smart phones. I can't believe people already think that would be anything special or news worthy. I know people that won't get in their cars without their smart phones because "what if something happened?" The ONLY time I ever needed to call someone because of a car problem I had to pull over and walk a quarter mile to a gas station.... OH THE HUMANITY!

      No, I'm not a Luddite - I get the value of Waze and

  • if they have AT&T. spotty coverage at best. Verizon is a popular choice.
  • It almost seems similar to everyone (OK, a lot of people) losing their ability to do mental arithmetic when calculators became popular. Crutches, that's all they are.
    • I try to go out of my way to attempt mental-math until I either know I'm licked, or have arrived at something resembling an answer. I then cross-check it with a calculator or re-calculate on paper. It's a capacity I won't ever willingly let go of.

    • True story. Me and a buddy were going to his favorite strip club in the city he grew up in. He needed to get his SD card from another friend's GPS so he could get the address in his GPS, then drove there. Had a good time.

      When we're trying to leave, he was plugging in home to the GPS, and while it was figuring out what the hell to do, I told him to just take a right out of the parking lot (which would take us east) then then keep right around the parking lot (two more rights), and a final right when we got

    • Awhile back, a friend was trying to find some place he'd been as a kid. Naturally, he consulted his GPS, and we hadn't even gotten on the highway before it steered us wrong. We got on the highway, and got in the right area, but then it kept steering us one way, then told us we were going the wrong way! We found the right place only because my friend thought something looked familiar and turned on the right street. The GPS never did get it right.

    • Actually, I kind of chuckled at this line:

      I aim to make it to Knoxville by dinner without having any real idea of whether that's possible.

      I mean, you drive along. You see a sign that says "Knoxville 67 miles." You do the math, "If I average 60 MPH, it should take me an hour and seven minutes."

      If nothing else, doing math problems in your head is a wonderful way to pass the time.

  • One time I was driving north on I-5 towards Sacramento when I had a tire blowout, which I hadn't noticed until I saw my tire go flying off into the field. I pulled over, called AAA and fetched my tire. After an hour, I was told they couldn't find me as I had no clue to where I was past the last exit. I gave the AAA operator the GPS coordinates of my cellphone. The AAA driver showed up 30 minutes later.
  • Not saying it necessarily causes physical, or even irreversible changes to the brain, but it results in a sort of corruption/degredation of the mind. If your mind is dependent on being spoon-fed information to complete tasks, it becomes weak. Don't get me wrong, GPS is a valuable tool; I'm very concerned, however, that we're causing our species a disservice by eschewing the practice of such a vital skill in favor of GPS. Next time you're out and about on a cloudy day, ask someone which direction is North.

    • Meh, "North" is only important if you are using the technology that the GPS displaced - the compass. I'm not too worried about people losing their ability to read maps, because any permanent loss of GPS is likely to be accompanied by massive societal upheaval and starvation. Reading road-maps will be the least of our problems.

      • Re:GPS causes brain damage /s (Score:5, Funny)

        by Rockoon ( 1252108 ) on Monday August 07, 2017 @03:00PM (#54958009)

        Meh, "North" is only important if you are using the technology that the GPS displaced - the compass.

        Look everyone, millennials thinks GPS replaces compasses.

        if only there were a way to tell which direction was north without some sort of device....

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DarkOx ( 621550 )

        accompanied by massive societal upheaval and starvation

        See that is where I'd want to be able to read a map. Maybe not a road map but I'd want to know where the large areas of unbroken forest are, rivers, lakes, and streams within them, etc. Maybe which direction the more sizeable population centers are so I could avoid those places.

        Being able to use a map and compass seems pretty useful in your post apocalyptic situ. If you are trying to ride it out anyway.

    • ...which direction is North.

      I think it's to the left, isn't it?

    • A moron navigating with a GPS is going to still be a moron navigating with a map and compass. It's not the tools that turn people into idiots. Plenty of people got lost or had a bad sense of direction before the age of GPS navigation. This is not a new phenomenon.

  • Oh Millennials, you are so funny (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Imagine, no cell phone either and if you broke down on the road, having to walk to find a pay phone (which no longer exists)

    Yeah, this was reality less than 20 years ago. wow, Millennials, the generation more out of touch with the past faster than any previous generation in existence. This goes along with the guy who "found" "free tv" using an antenna the other week.

    If shit every really does hit the fan and we start living in a post-apocalyptic world where tech no longer works, Millennials will be the firs

    • It honestly isn't just the young that would have this problem. Were I work I was the young guy for a long time until they hired a couple millennials. However I'm the only one in the office that doesn't own a smart phone, let alone a cell phone. Whenever it comes up everyone always questions what I'd do if my car broke down or something, like walking somewhere for help is just an impossible idea. Granted a cell phone or smart phone in such a circumstance could be very convenient. My issue is that it just isn

  • other articles (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07, 2017 @02:39PM (#54957837)

    Check out the other articles in this series:

    "Going to a Restaurant Without Consulting Yelp: Can It Be Done?"

    and

    "Watching a TV Show without an Aggregate Review Score: One Man's Odyssey"

    True think-pieces for our age

  • TripTik (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Monday August 07, 2017 @02:42PM (#54957865) Journal

    Back in the 80s my family moved over a thousand miles away for dad to go to school. We were AAA members, and my parents visited the local AAA and got a TripTik. It seems they still have them (at least in name - seems to be an app or something now), but back then it was a linear map that was bound at the top. You would flip through the pages and the roadway you were to take was always oriented up / down along the paper. They would custom build it for you, inserting the appropriate sheets into the booklet, to get you to your destination. Then of course you could follow it backwards for the return trip. I remember they even manually highlighted the route, and would mark areas of construction on the map. They would also show points of interest and good places to stop.

    Here are some pictures (random sources off the internet that match what I remember):
    https://img0.etsystatic.com/00... [etsystatic.com]

    Fold out detail:
    https://yearofadventure.files.... [wordpress.com]

    Here's one that's been stamped marking an area where delays might occur:
    http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_-2gf... [blogspot.com]

    • Alas, the AAA doesn't do anything that useful any more. In fact, about a year ago they discontinued a whole bunch of detail maps in favor of broader area maps. You have to pay to use their DMV services, so you don't get that any more. If you can afford to pay for your own tows and get reimbursed, you might as well just get roadside assistance from your insurance company.

  • You think that texting while driving is a problem? Try being by yourself and having to drive and consult a map while driving. It can be just as dangerous. OK, maybe if you have someone riding with you who can play navigator it's not too bad, but I can only tell you in my experience I definitely remember being incredibly frustrated with passengers completely unable to read a map. I can read a map and I remember in the early part of the 2000s being in Spain and playing navigator with a really good map wh

    • Re:For young people and forgetful old fogies (Score:5, Insightful)

      by asylumx ( 881307 ) on Monday August 07, 2017 @02:56PM (#54957973)

      Try being by yourself and having to drive and consult a map while driving. It can be just as dangerous.

      So you do the same thing you should be doing with your phone: you pull over, put the car in park, and pour over the maps until you figure it out.

      If you think it's tough in a car, try doing it in a plane sometime. In that case pulling over is not such a trivial task.

  • This is ridiculous - something a twentysomething writer would come up with, thinking he was being clever. Map-making was, and is, a thing - only the medium has changed. Detailed maps have been plentiful and easy to come by far longer than I've been alive.

    We used to do road trips sans GPS every summer. Sure, you might take a wrong turn occasionally... but GPS-enabled maps are not infallible. On more than one occasion, I've had Waze direct me down a road which didn't go through. Heck, I've had Google Maps tel

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mjr167 ( 2477430 )
      And just think... people used to hop into a wooden boat and sail across the ocean with nothing but a compass and a sextant.

    • This is ridiculous - something a twentysomething writer would come up with, thinking he was being clever

      Indeed. I used paper maps all the time for about 3 decades. Might as well write about "life before cars" or "what's it like to be a cowboy". In this case you don't even have to try it yourself, just ask us fogies, we're still here!

      I do have an odd little "lost" story, though. Once on a lone biz trip to Washington DC area I decided to do some sight-seeing. On my way back to my motel, I ended up lost as my

      • There were rows and rows of long dinner tables with appetizers on them ready to be eaten, but NO PEOPLE! I kept walking around looking for a person, anybody, but came up empty. It was like a ghost-town with hungry ghosts.

        Makes me think of "Spirited Away"... probably a good thing you didn't eat the food. ;-)

  • Seriously. With the proliferation and addiction of cellphones, cheap gps and mobile internet, I'm honestly surprised anybody even knows how to read a map anymore.

    This is a good experience for the lot of you. Next time, get you a nice up-to-date atlas and plan your trip ahead of time. This sort of thing should be a requirement for high school graduation.

    Don't let your analog skills diminish to the point that you are relearning the basics again. We are all spoiled with always connected internet access, cheap

    • Basic land nav really is becoming a lost skill. I have a cousin who was a weekend warrior for a while and he even lacks navigation skills without a GPS and detailed map. A few years back he shot a deer and it ran about 2 miles from where his stand was. Once we found it he wanted to drag it back out the way we came insisting that we weren't on the other side of the hill from my stand. I tried to convince him that my stand was only about 100 yards east and if we just walked that direction a short way we would
  • Seriously, what's so clever about ditching GPS? Anyone over the age of 40 has done this without considering it a big deal (or worthy of posting on /.). People traversed continents for centuries without GPS. For those who post about how dangerous it is to look at maps while driving - don't. Whenever I took a long road trip in the days before GPS I consulted the map beforehand and made simple notes - what junction to take, which direction etc. Hardly rocket science.....

  • roadtrip 101 (Score:3)

    by mdpowell ( 256664 ) on Monday August 07, 2017 @02:53PM (#54957939)

    Around 2000, I spent over a month one summer driving around the US with camping gear, a stack of AAA maps, AAA books for each state listing campgrounds, and no plan other than to see interesting things like national parks. I drove around 10,000 miles. Most mornings, I spread out a map on the picnic table and figured out where to go that day and where I would be able to sleep or shop if necessary. No GPS and a basic analog/digital cell phone that kind of worked (analog, $0.69/minute roaming) in most non-mountain areas. It was an unforgettable experience. It's a shame if newer travelers are unable to experience some of these things.

    As the driver found out, USA atlas with 1-2 pages per state should be in the toolkit purely as a backup map. AAA still has good state-level paper maps that are usable for everything except in-city driving and are good for trip planning even with a GPS.

    On most trips, I still try to carry the state-level maps and usually use them a couple of times for something. I have yet to see a good way on a small-screen phone or GPS to answer questions like "how far away is the coast," or "how much out of our way would it be to go to that town" or "what's the next sizable town within 2 miles of the road we are on," which a glance at a paper map answers. GPS will tell you the closest town but it may be way off your route.

    I do think GPS has been a big benefit for safety. Reading maps while driving was never safe but often necessary before GPS.

    • AAA also has a lot of city maps as well, at least the big ones. Saved me many times!

    • First, I'll mention that I'm old enough that I used to navigate all the time without GPS. I traveled a lot for business from the mid 90s until about 2010, and didn't start using GPS navigation until ~2005. Almost every week for a decade I was finding my way around a different city, getting from the airport car rental location to the hotel, to the customer site (or sites) to restaurants, etc., all with nothing more than paper maps and road signs. So I know that not only is it possible, it's not even hard. It

  • This guy's an idiot. I'm all in agreement that road signs are inadequate, and most places don't have anywhere near enough (other than specific tourist destinations like the Orlando area (where it's probably sponsored)), but there ARE such things as printed maps, or pre-trip research on Google Maps, or just knowing the area that you live in.

  • Back in my day I didn't have GPS or cell phones. I did field service for point of sale systems going to mom and pop stores all of the southeast in tiny little towns. I was usually given directions by my boss that were similar to a Larry the Cable guy skit.I had no problem reading a map, changing the am radio station, shifting gears, drinking a beer, while smoking a cigarette. Kids today just can't multitask.

    • My grandpa was a dab hand at steering with his knees while he lit his pipe. If he needed to change gears he'd do the clutch and I'd push the stick.

  • Look, I love technology as much as the next guy (possibly much more when the next guy isn't on slashdot), but... I mean... really?

    Roads and cars do not need GPS to function. They have existed in more-or-less the same form for decades and have not really changed since GPS became mainstream.

    I usually absolutely disagree with alarmists that say technology is going to "ruin" people, but seriously, if people consider being able to drive your car to a different state without GPS to be "an accomplishment", I think

  • As far as I know every interstate still has rest areas and some of them are called "Welcome Centers". They have free maps of the state you're in and sometimes the neighboring states as well. Usually, the welcome centers are near the state borders but some of them are more in the middle of the state.
    --
    JimFive

  • I use GPS apps a lot - but not so much for directions. Or sometimes I use them to find where something else, but then I do a lot of my own navigation to get there because I have a better idea of a route I want to take than the app does...

    There are all kinds of stories of people following GPS directions to do crazy things, but there's an even bigger problem of following directions where it's not a huge problem, just sub-optimal when just glancing at the map would quickly have let you choose a better immediat

    • Yes, I recently took a long trip with only a Garmin GPS and was frustrated by the times it would take us on some narrow winding road through the mountains that had an official speed limit of 55 mph, yet for most of the way you couldn't even go half that speed due to all the sharp bends in the road. Obviously the GPS's "fast" route was programmed according to the nominal speed limit -- not the actual speed that one could travel on that road. A paper map would surely have shown a better route. This has happen

  • Perhaps the Popular Mechanics reporter is just showing what happens when previously common skills are allowed to atrophy in favor of new convenient tools. This is a common occurrence, e.g., driving a stick shift.

    I still remember planning out cross-country road trips using just a road atlas. I wrote down turn-by-turn instructions along with mileage hints that I would use by mentally keeping track of the last odometer reading (back when my odometer showed tenths of miles). Because I had to actually keep al

  • back in the day of just printed maps from google + map books.

    I was on a trip at hit big traffic and had to look at an map with limited detail of the area to get off and go though a few local roads to get back on the other side of the backup (car cash + road work + big event + under sized highway) the other way going into the work zone was like an 2-3+ mile jam. Later in the trip I missed the right way at an ramp split and had to ask at an gas station down the road on how to get to my destination (ended be

  • I use the holistic approach. Surely someone else is going where I'm going so I follow them :)

  • I Did That... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rally2xs ( 1093023 ) on Monday August 07, 2017 @03:22PM (#54958183)

    ...for decades. I'm 70. It works, but it sucks. Basically you have to read the make, MEMORIZE your turns, and then go. On interstates, that'll take you a long ways, but in town? Forget it, you're going to have to stop after a while and memorize the next set of turns if it goes on too long. Then of course there's the question of whether this is the right turn or is it the interesection that is 200 feet up the road. Signs? Signs? We don't need no steekin' signs.... yes we do, but if they're the size of a postage stamp, it matters with a map, not so much with a GPS. And then there's the signs that are big enough, but have 6 trees growing up around them and are covered with a poison ivy plant yet to boot.

    Driving has always been an adventure, but we don't have to get silly about it. Use the GPS...

  • He is missing an important tool: while in a gas station, ask about how to reach the destination, or at least, the next POI.

  • The problem with maps (Score:3)

    by Cro Magnon ( 467622 ) on Monday August 07, 2017 @03:32PM (#54958283) Homepage Journal

    I'm old enough that I have used maps. Reading them is the easy part. the hard part is getting the !@#$ things folded up and put back in the glove box. Nobody I knew ever managed to do that right!

  • Ever lost GPS Signal? (Score:5, Informative)

    by jediborg ( 4808835 ) on Monday August 07, 2017 @03:40PM (#54958367)
    Ever been halfway to your destination when "Satellite signal lost" is heard over the speaker? Then you miss an important exit in the time it takes the GPS to regain signal and re-calculate? This happened several times for me, along with the realization that I was becoming more and more directionally challenged by relying 100% on GPS. I still use GPS to this day. But you know what? Usually before you click the 'guide me with your sweet voice, robot lady' button, the GPS app (google maps for me) plots out a course on a map for you that is zoomable and superior to any written map. I take a few minutes to analyze the route, using my brain to plot out the course and making notes of possible alternative routes. This way you have the course in your head, you can still get there if the GPS signal is lost or the app crashes, you are still exercising the part of your brain that modern humans should keep, and you can rely on the GPS lady until things go awry.

    I recommend all humans do this, you never know when you will be without a GPS device in your hometown (or even farther!) trying to get home. Its a basic survival technique, and I have learned over the years not to let basic survival techniques be lost to technological dependence. (e.g. know how to use CPR, and don't expect to be able to look up on youtube 'how to perform CPR' in an emergency)

    Also: If you live in America and you are going from one state to another, you don't really need GPS, or a map to get there. The roads are numbered according to orientation, the signs are aplenty leading you to the next major destination. If you are in New Mexico and want to go to Denver, just follow signs for 'Pueblo' then follow signs for 'Denver'. Its probably the most user-friendly road navigation system ever created.

  • A girl just asks for directions.

  • $13.46 from Amazon Prime.

  • smdh (Score:2)

    by Holi ( 250190 )
    As someone who has been driving longer then GPS has been ubiquitous, this made me cringe and lament for mankind.
  • When people didn't have gps they generally found the right maps for the route before they left. If such common sense was utilized here it wouldn't have been much of a story.

  • When I was six years old, it was a game for me to try to figure out where we'd be in an hour or exactly when we'd get to our destination. Of course, most speed limits at the time were 60mph or 30mph, making it much easier.

    Through most of my life of driving, I've spent a couple of days when I first move to a place memorizing the map. I also have a really good sense of compass direction. So, if you know where you are in relation to the major roads in the area and can recognize the difference between smaller a

  • My wife and I grew up using maps, and it's quite natural for us. I often use GPS especially for traveling, but my wife is resistant to using GPS, they steer you into lakes and lead you astray, etc. When I get online directions or use a GPS for long distance travel, I almost always check out the route to see if it makes sense. I often modify my route for a multitude of reasons such as; I know a different route is actually faster, construction I'm aware of, a different route is much more scenic and therefore

  • Drove from New York to Texas (1500 miles) without GPS.

    I died.

    Bright side is I didn't have to live to see the day Popular Mechanics would print crap like TFA.

  • Here's the real story (Score:3)

    by viperidaenz ( 2515578 ) on Monday August 07, 2017 @04:40PM (#54958781)

    Blogger/Reporter admits he is slightly retarded. Too retarded to follow street signs, but not retarded enough to crash his car in the process.

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