Friday, August 5, 2011

Take on the GPS highlighted route




I am a guy who believes in logic so when I am met with ineptitude on any level it frustrates me. A few weeks ago I get in my car en-route to Pennsylvania from Brooklyn, The directions are simple and have me take the BQE (eastbound) to the Verrazano Bridge, across the Goethals to to the NJ turnpike and then to some state highway into PA. I had not looked it up on a map but roughly knowing where I was going the route seemed reasonable. My issue was on the return route. I imputed my home-address and started following the directions but almost immediately I recognized that i was on a different road than I had come on. On the road back i crawled down some country road, merged onto bumper-to-bumper misery on Route 9 and finally cut through a town to finally to the Turnpike
How can a computer program whose only function -other than offering soothing reassurance- is to get from point A to point B give you two totally different sets of directions when going to a place and when returning from it? It was as if you are on some tour and all of a sudden the tour-guide takes you to some hole-in-the-wall restaurant which later is revealed to be his cousin's place.

This is where there seems to e a disconnect because there was no construction or detours on the obvious route yet my Garmin was more than happy to show me the sights of the worst of the Garden State with two screaming kids in the 100 degree heat.
Thanks for nothing

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