18 Dec 07
Every day there are more and more sat navs hovering above more and more dashboards.
Never mind that a great many of those cars are driving in straight lines on the nation's motorways, which rather limits the scope for navigation. Never mind that sat navs can be very distracting. Never mind that a lot of them are subject to extreme nav lag, leaving the driver hesitating on the approach to a roundabout, awaiting instruction while a queue builds up behind.
Never mind all that. I'm very distrustful of them, and yet I seem to have been utterly won over by one that I've been trying lately in our Roomster 1.9 TDI. It's not the optional Skoda system. It's a portable system from the RAC called the Satnav 220 and it's very good.
As with a lot of technology, the question I always ask of a sat nav is: does it make my life simpler? Related questions: can I depend on it, will it save me time, is it safe, can I afford it?
Paper maps, road signs and common sense are all you need to get you where you want to be, especially if supplemented by a mobile phone. But however good maps and signs are at telling you where you need to go, they're not so good at telling you where you are. Sat nav is great for that.
The other excellent thing sat nav can do, if it's the right sort of sat nav, is to warn you about traffic problems ahead of you, in a way that local radio rarely does.
