In my opinion a foe. My brother in law has one and he used it when he first moved to a new city (where I live) The route that it took him to my house from his is actually almost a mile longer than the way I drive to his house! So environmentally and economically they are a foe!|||my friend said it was definitely foe..... they were going on holiday and mistakenly put the wrong postcode in and ended up miles and miles astray, quite funny for us as a story but not for them.|||It's about as safe as using a mobile phone, and they've been banned.|||Friend definitely.
Helps me get anywhere, and in many cases saves me time. Helps me find restaurants and hotels, provides phone numbers to me.
And, it has actually helped my navigation in that I am learning new routes that I am aware of even when I am not driving a vehicle that has a nav system in it
As with any device being used in a car, it must be used with common sense. You should program your nav while parked, and if it has voice command and voice feedback, take advantage of that feature so that you are not staring at the nav while driving.|||If you like directions then why would a system that tells you the route be anything other than good|||We use in when sailing and it is definitely a friend then.|||If you're reading while you're driving you are a danger to yourself and others. If you pull over and it doen't get you lost then it's OK.
Mike|||Hi, We have a Tom Tom sat nav and took it on holiday to Dorset with us last year and i have to say that without it we would never have found not only our accommodation but also most of the places we went to, as my map reading skills are naff to say the least which causes loads of arguments between hubby and I.
We also have an LPG car and without sat nav would have never found the petrol stations that sell it. Another point is ours warns you both with an alarm and a visual that there is a speed camera information that you would not know unless you lived in the place, all in all i would have to say a friend..|||My satellite navigation system actually overheated and exploded, giving me slight burns on my left forearm. I would not recommend one to anybody due to this reason, until engineers can produce more reliable and vastly safer products.|||Definitely a friend. Has saved me loads of time and also made me more confident in the car. As a new driver having to concentrate on trying to find out where you are going as well as all the other traffic is quite daunting. Anything that can help make people focus more on the road is good. Need the audio turned on though, otherwise like Mark and Automan state it becomes very dangerous.|||sometimes good for places you dont know but you still need to use your own judgement as to go where it says, pull over and check your route from time to time ,and take out of your car when not in it as thieves will take it out for you ,|||They are distracting as the driver will lose all common sense and ignore the road markings, sign etc just by doing what the sat nav tells them.|||I have a tom tom 700 and its fantastic but it does go on a bit in the background lol and takes a little getting use to i would rate in 8 out of 10|||I've often thought that SatNav could be a step to the next stage of traffic management. If the kind of information that is put up on the matrix boards concerning time to next junction is linked in to the route planning in real time, and is extended to all major roads, we could achieve real time active traffic management. This could maximise the traffic flow between motorways and arterial A-roads. Some technical details to iron out, but the potential is there for it to reduce congestion significantly.
Therefore I believe we are in the early stages of what could be a very good friendship with SatNav.|||i think it is a friend to hlep you from a to b|||Best thing to happen to driving since drive-thru.
I'll be the first to admit that mine has definitely sent me round the houses on occasion rather than the direct route. But it has always got me there, and sometimes I've seen things that I would have missed if I'd taken the boring route. I find that more often than not it is the post code system which is at fault rather than the device itself.
To the people who compare it to mobile phone use, it isn't in the same league. Anything that can let you concentrate on the road ahead, rather than worrying about where the next turn is, has to be a good thing.
Not failed me yet, and been a help rather than a hindrance.
And got mine free after a relative took out an insurance policy and gave us their free gift.|||i had a bad experience with my sat navigaton it started out ok then the next thing it told me to go drive on the other side of the street (i was driving in London)
Beware if you use a sat nav always have a map on stand by, because they can mess you up at any time!!!!|||Can be a friend if treated with some common sense and not obeyed blindly. We've all heard of truckers being sent down increasingly narrowing roads until they've had to reverse after getting stuck. We've also heard of that stupid woman who drove her BMW into a river, or that fool who wound up driving the wrong way on a motorway "because the sat-nav didn't say not to!" What's wrong with people, don't they look where they're going?
I treat it like a passenger trying to map-read for me, if what they're saying is patently wrong I ignore it!|||Foe.
1, Usually placed in line of vision, if you had a mark or sticker in your windshield in the area swept by the wipers, your vehicle would fail the MOT (annual safety test), but yet people put these there.
2, They have now ruined quiet by roads which were unsuitable for large vehicles or heavy traffic, by directing people down unsuitable routes.
3, They undermine the Highways Agency traffic management policies (have you ever noticed that direction signs often take you around a slightly longer route, often avoiding small lanes etc.)
4, Another distraction for the driver, worse than mobile phones.
5, It is a computer, people believe it is right and will turn into rives and onto railway tracks if the machine tells them to.
6, They make people sheep, slavishly following the computers route.
7, They are very steal-able, even the telltale mark on the windshield is enough for some thief to break into your vehicle looking for one.|||Definate foe.
Not only does it take away that basic human instinct of a sense of direction, but will also result in a whole generation of imbeciles that can't read maps - I'm a woman and am v proud of my accurate map reading skills, and knowledge of the British road network.
I had to borrowed one once, just to see if they are as bad as I thought. I used it to navigate from East Anglia to S Wales. Got to B'ham, and it told me to stay on the M5 all the way down to the Severn Bridge. My gut instinct told me this was a longer route, so I turned off down the M50 to go into Wales (which is a quieter and more scenic route). Once it had repositioned itself on the new route, the distance to destination suddenly dropped by 50 odd miles, the journey time reduced, and I saved myself 拢5 by not going over the bridge. The Sat Nav was trying to con me into using more fuel and paying for the bridge!
Have since found out it may have been on motorway preference setting, but nothing beats using a map, common sense, and local radio to avoid traffic jams.|||it can be both I have been told to go the wrong way up a one way street but I changed the route by taking a right and waited for it to recalculate another route I think drivers must take more care reading the road signs than just listening to the sat nav, it would also help if we knew the numbers to contact the suppliers on so they can change what information they have on their system.
P.S hope you read this.
I would also like to add like some of the other people on this
page It has help me find places that otherwise I would not have found as i was driving to my flying school it's out in the stix. And i would nether have found it if it wasn't for my nav man F20 It maybe cheap basic but it does the job this doesn't mean that i cant read maps but just if i need to get some where i don't have to sit and read maps for half an hour be for travelling as we know you should never read maps whilst driving!.|||Used Sat-nav for years at sea and useful as a DR (dead reckoning) machine for cloudy days. Not much use for anything else as they are quire inaccurate. I wouldn't trust one to put me on the correct road. They are also under the control.or the Yankee government and could be switched off for any spurious reason so I will continue using a map.
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