As one who wishes to make full use of the gps system, I must confess that
Jonathan's reply to Richard's email concerning weaknesses in the system,
somewhat surprised me, especially the phrase: "no fundamental flaws". I find
that a high percentage of routes over 30 miles in length, which I ask the
system to provide, are either abandoned by the system with the announcement:
"route cannot be completed", or are obviously incorrect to the point of
absurdity. One route I asked for entailed an actual journey of 302 miles, the
system provided a route of 475 miles. Without going into too many details, it
commenced by sending us at least 40 miles in the opposite direction. It often
refuses to recommend main motor roads which have been in existence for many
years, though when taken on to these roads it named them correctly. It
suggested instead routes which considerably exsend the journey via secondary
roads; Many of the routes offered are unnecessarily convoluted, even when
simple routes are readily available. Many of the towns I wish to go to, Bolton
for example, apparently contain no streets at all, a fact which is elicited if
I ask for a list of streets. On these occasions I am told "no streets of that
name", though it is a list of streets I've asked for, not a specific street.
Many house numbers appear to be missing, even though, in some cases, they were
built a century ago. In these cases, the system enters a zero, which is
apparently at one end of the desired road, often miles from the requested
house. How fundamental does a flaw have to be to warrant the description
"fundamental?" On another occasion, I wished to travel to a village some 14
miles in a generally southerly direction. Imagine my consternation when, at
one point the system instructed me to travel 11 miles in a north-easterly,
instead of a south-westerly direction. How fundamental do you want? A few
weeks ago I was travelling toward London on a motorway, I had the system set to
tell me of forthcoming intersections. It failed to mention that we were
approaching the M 25' one of the best known roads around the capital and very
necessary on our route. On this journey we needed to leave the M 25 at
junction 9. Unfortunately, the system has not been made aware that motorway
junction numbers exist, though the whole of the travelling population use them
as a matter of course. Though we knew the actual number of the road by which
we had to leave the motorway, it happened to coincide with another road exiting
at the same point. This other road was mentioned as an approaching
intersection, but not the one we needed to take. Fortunately, we were not
relying on the gps alone; thus catastrophe was averted. If the junction number
had been spoken, this difficulty would have been avoided. A point for a future
upgrade perhaps! I call that fairly fundamental.
Yes, of course there are plus factors. The fact that one can establish the
name of the road one is on, the detection of an actual house number, (if
available), pedestrian routes within a limited locality; etc. all very
laudable. but to state that no fundamental flaws were detected, surely smacks
of complacency, and I'm sure that's not the impression you wished to create.
There is an old saying: actions speak louder than words. Don Cooper.
