Spacial Cognitive De-Skilling

Interesting. I bought a Garmin last year that gives directions by both turn-by-turn and by landmark. I thought it was nice and probably uses more memory. It probably also could sneak in some advertising if it were more "real-time" on the land marks (say what is playing now at the movie).
 
Interesting stuff. Perhaps as a byproduct of flight planning, I always call up Google maps and look at my drive route in advance (north up, of course!) My latest car has excellent GPS (and superb voice recognition to program it), but I've got this aversion to blindly following turn-by-turn directions. It is nice, though, to hit the "navigate home" button when you're in an unfamiliar area with one-way streets and convoluted onramps, etc.
 
Cap'n Jack said:
Interesting. I bought a Garmin last year that gives directions by both turn-by-turn and by landmark.
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Same here: "Turn right at the stoplight.", "Turn left before the Pizza Hut", things like that.

I have a problem with the GPS, when I use it to get somewhere I've never been I don't get the learning experience and then have problems finding the place the second time without it. When my brother moved I used the GPS to find his place out in the boonies, at night. The next time I went to visit, I realized that without my own navigation the first time, I needed that GPS to find it again.
 
I've noticed the same things and I've lived all over the place in the last 25 yrs. Used to just drive around to find my bearings. Then, GPS became helpful, then a crutch. Now, I'm back to GPS is a tool and has its place. It's not a replacement for knowledge or experience, it's an aid. Nothing more, nothing less.
 
A non-pilot friend posted yesterday that they can't tell north, south, east, and west so "don't bother" giving them directions that way.

I guess you're allowed to demand everyone else treats you like the dummy you aspire to be nowadays.
 
Matthew said:
Same here: "Turn right at the stoplight.", "Turn left before the Pizza Hut", things like that.

I have a problem with the GPS, when I use it to get somewhere I've never been I don't get the learning experience and then have problems finding the place the second time without it. When my brother moved I used the GPS to find his place out in the boonies, at night. The next time I went to visit, I realized that without my own navigation the first time, I needed that GPS to find it again.
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I've also noticed that it takes me more trips to recurring destinations to memorize them when I used GPS the first time. But not that many. Probably that's because I still plan the route ahead of time to get the bigger picture. There are some truly horrid roads around here -- nothing more than trails, really -- that most manufacturers' navigation units route traffic over until they get enough user feedback to demote them. Like this one, for example:

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So unless my trip represents a last-minute change in plans while I'm already out, I look at the routing first to make sure it's going to take me over actual roads. That probably lessens the dumbification factor of using the GPS.

Rich
 
Routing has always been my biggest beef with auto GPS, outside metro areas, and I've had to caution my kids about using GPS alone. Last summer the Garmin routed one of my daughters onto a logging road in the mountains of NC! She kept her cool and got through. Fortunately it was daylight at the time.

My wife can't find unfamiliar places without it. Sigh.
 
denverpilot said:
A non-pilot friend posted yesterday that they can't tell north, south, east, and west so "don't bother" giving them directions that way.
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Just curious - male or female?

As a general rule, I've heard men tend to think in terms of compass directions, and women in terms of landmarks. Not sure of the validity of that claim, but there you have it.
 
RJM62 said:
There are some truly horrid roads around here -- nothing more than trails, really -- that most manufacturers' navigation units route traffic over until they get enough user feedback to demote them. Like this one, for example:

tom1.jpg


tom2.jpg
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That road looks like fun.

Unless of course there are logging trucks going the other direction.
 
N659HB said:
Routing has always been my biggest beef with auto GPS, outside metro areas,
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This is also a pet peeve. I want to see a few possible routes. Not the route it chooses in order to take me past the stores that have paid to advertise.
 
FastEddieB said:
Just curious - male or female?

As a general rule, I've heard men tend to think in terms of compass directions, and women in terms of landmarks. Not sure of the validity of that claim, but there you have it.
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That "tend to" has so many exceptions it's worthless. Personally, if someone tells me a store is going to be on my right, and it's not clear what direction they expect me to be coming from, I ask whether it's on the north or south (or east vs. west) side of the street. That's also what I do when I'm describing a destination's location to someone else, and I've found that the number of people that can't relate to that kind of description is about evenly split between males and females.

And I also prefer to map out my route beforehand rather than just rely blindly on the GPS/smartphone app. (And apps that give you a moving map but which orient the map randomly, neither north up nor track up - Apple's Maps app does this - drive me crazy... :mad2:)
 
When my brother moved out into the country, many of those gravel roads don't necessarily have a sign that makes sense. When the directions I get are like, "Take the first left after the second gravel road, and then turn right where the chain link fence begins, ...", they don't help much at night, so the GPS really worked well for me.

It's interesting the differences that you see in different parts of the country.

In most of the midwest, roads are on a nice grid. Generally the numbered streets run E/W with the street numbers starting at 1st Street closest to "the river" or the center of downtown. Named streets run N/S.
The main streets are on a 1 mile grid, with the side streets in between. What I don't know are the orientation of the named streets, but if you can get me a numbered street and some named streets that I am familiar with, I can get there. I might not know the most efficient route, but I can get there.

When we dropped off my daughter at her new place in eastern NC, I did tell her, "Welcome to east coast street layouts." The random street placement, and no apparent pattern to a lot of the street numbers, make finding your way around pretty challenging.

Pre-GPS days and I'd consult a map or atlas to get me around an unfamiliar city. And to find a place in my own city that I wasn't familiar with, I used to look at the city map that was always in the phone book.
 
A couple decades ago my brother in law came out for a visit, he's from the N/E. I was giving him directions somewhere, "Follow this road east until the 4-way stop. Turn right, continue south for 5-6 miles until you get to a large intersection, then turn west. In another 7-8 miles you'll get to another large intersection, turn south again. That'll get you where you need to go." He stopped me, and said, "Where I'm from, we don't do directions, all our roads go all directions. I need names and 'right or left'. "
 
Stop the presses! Ravioli USES an iPhone for driving directions. *GASP* No paper maps in the car. What a hypocrite he is!

I like the turn-by-turn spoken into my Tones but sometimes it's a pain if I'm singing along with Prince or people in the car are yacking at the same time.
 
@Matthew - Two similar stories:

I had to go to a facility in Windsor, CO in the mid 90's. Instructions were 25 North, 392 West, turn at the cemetery, when you see about a dozen buildings that's us. Go the building at the end.
I'm like, what's your address? And they said, "I don't know if there is one." This little place was Kodak! I asked them how they get mail and they said, of PO Box xxxxxx and then they bring it on over.

I asked my father for directions to his (our) cabin. He's like 42 North, on the other side of Oakhurst look for Road 430. Then it'll be on the right. So I asked, what's the address and he says, "I don't know, but it's the only one with our name on a sign!
 
So a couple years ago I met up with a person from another office to attend a meeting. Rather than meet up at our local office in the area and drive together, she elected to go directly to the meeting. Afterwards, the plan was to have lunch, then return to our local office for a couple hours prior to returning to our own offices. I was familiar with the area. She was not.

We had lunch. My instructions: "Follow me." Period. Follow me. Not stare at your GPS. Follow me. I got in the right hand lane to take the exit to the freeway. She got in the left hand lane because her GPS said the onramp was on the left side. Well, it was, about a month earlier.

An hour later, she showed up at the office after taking a grand tour of downtown Roseville.
 
Ravioli said:
@Matthew - Two similar stories:

I had to go to a facility in Windsor, CO in the mid 90's. Instructions were 25 North, 392 West, turn at the cemetery, when you see about a dozen buildings that's us. Go the building at the end.
I'm like, what's your address? And they said, "I don't know if there is one." This little place was Kodak! I asked them how they get mail and they said, of PO Box xxxxxx and then they bring it on over.

I asked my father for directions to his (our) cabin. He's like 42 North, on the other side of Oakhurst look for Road 430. Then it'll be on the right. So I asked, what's the address and he says, "I don't know, but it's the only one with our name on a sign!
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The houses never had numbers where I live until recently, and we still can't get mail at them. They're called "911 Addresses" and are intended primarily for emergency services. Before that one's address was just their name and the street name or RD / RR number.

As for mail, everyone still has a PO box and has to pick up their mail at the post office. There's no carrier route delivery. I used to hate it, but it grows on you.

Rich
 
FastEddieB said:
Just curious - male or female?

As a general rule, I've heard men tend to think in terms of compass directions, and women in terms of landmarks. Not sure of the validity of that claim, but there you have it.
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Anecdotal for sure, but based on comments from both men and women I've know I'd say it's reasonably accurate.
 
I have what In consider to be a nice, and relatively competent Garmin Nuvi that I consider useful only as a moving map. I have my home address programmed in and when I punch in "go home" I take particular delight in making it recalculate the route when I purposely miss a suggested turn.
 
Shepherd said:
This is also a pet peeve. I want to see a few possible routes. Not the route it chooses in order to take me past the stores that have paid to advertise.
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I'm glad my wife and I aren't the only folks who noticed that too. All routes lead past malls or chain restaurants. o_O
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
You are not drawing magenta line comparisons, are you?
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Wasn't trying to, but I can see the similarity.

Funny thing is that while in the military, I used GPS for precision timing requirements and the Fire Support page on the DAGR. And that's it. All our land/vehicle navigation was done map, compass, and distance. No moving maps, but strip maps and area maps were the norm.

I've only flown one flight in a plane equipped with a GPS moving map. Stayed in the local area and didn't use the GPS for navigation. Never have used Foreflight or any of the others either.
 
Ravioli said:
I like the turn-by-turn spoken into my Tones but sometimes it's a pain if I'm singing along with Prince or people in the car are yacking at the same time.
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Prince? Wasn't that over with like a couple of decades ago? ;)

Ravioli said:
I had to go to a facility in Windsor, CO in the mid 90's.
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Even in the 90s their address was: 9952 Eastman Park Drive. But the facility has been there since the 60s. You'd be amazed how surrounded the place is by civilization growth now.

Of course I'm amazed anything with the name Kodak on it still exists. Talk about a company that nearly missed the boat completely on tech that was about to kill them.
 
denverpilot said:
Of course I'm amazed anything with the name Kodak on it still exists. Talk about a company that nearly missed the boat completely on tech that was about to kill them.
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That facility produced aluminum substrate printing film for newspaper printing. Not sure if newspaper printing has evolved. Newspapers seems to be devolving.
 
It took me five years of beating on Google, NavWorx, and TeleAtlas (the big three in GPS street databases) to REMOVE the not existant in 15 years piece of road that used to cross our runway. It's finally filtering out there. We've not had people drive (or attempt to drive) across the runway so much.

The other one I have to tell any tractor trailers I'm expecting deliveries with is that despite what their GPS tells them, one of the roads it likes to route people over is a very narrow, not in great shape, unpaved road.

Of course, to get to my house, I have to tell them that they can ignore the "aircraft only" sign as my driveway is a few feet beyond the sign and it really seems to screw some people up.
 
FastEddieB said:
Just curious - male or female?

As a general rule, I've heard men tend to think in terms of compass directions, and women in terms of landmarks. Not sure of the validity of that claim, but there you have it.
Click to expand...

That's what got Fred and Amelia in trouble.
 
flyingron said:
It took me five years of beating on Google, NavWorx, and TeleAtlas (the big three in GPS street databases) to REMOVE the not existant in 15 years piece of road that used to cross our runway. It's finally filtering out there. We've not had people drive (or attempt to drive) across the runway so much.

The other one I have to tell any tractor trailers I'm expecting deliveries with is that despite what their GPS tells them, one of the roads it likes to route people over is a very narrow, not in great shape, unpaved road.

Of course, to get to my house, I have to tell them that they can ignore the "aircraft only" sign as my driveway is a few feet beyond the sign and it really seems to screw some people up.
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Those are some of the kinds of things that make me wonder how self-driving vehicles will ever be practical.
 
Well going down the unpaved road will just be bumpy. The car probably will give up when it hits the signs we placed in the middle of the "road" advising people to not cross the runway. The aircraft know to dodge that sign.
 
Like any other technology, it can be a tool or a crutch. I use the GPS in my car to read the street names, as with my poor distance vision, I can't read the signs until I'm closer than I'd like. In that way, it actually increases my situational awareness, as I know which street is coming up long before I would have, and long before my wife does. (And she has eyes like a hawk!)

Most times, I have the spoken directions muted, and just follow the map, the same way I would have decades ago. (Just without having to manage a paper map.) However, in heavy traffic, or in unfamiliar areas, (especially if in both) I use the spoken directions for safety reasons.

Like I said, a tool or a crutch, depending on how you use it.
 
We moved about 2 years ago to the area my wife grew up in. Before we moved, I always had her tell me where to go when visiting and I never built a good mental map of the area. When it was clear we would be moving here, I starting looking at Google Maps to figure out where things actually were. It was quite surprising that what mental map thought I had was completely wrong.

Once we moved here, I used the GPS built into our car quite a bit for the first few months, then I went to only having it show me the map and not the directions. For the past year, I don't have the map up at all.

For me, spending some time on Google Maps and then using the GPS initially was helpful.
 
RJM62 said:
The houses never had numbers where I live until recently, and we still can't get mail at them. They're called "911 Addresses" and are intended primarily for emergency services. Before that one's address was just their name and the street name or RD / RR number.

As for mail, everyone still has a PO box and has to pick up their mail at the post office. There's no carrier route delivery. I used to hate it, but it grows on you.

Rich
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I grew up in a house in rural Indiana that had an address of "Rural Route 1 Box 88". Now it has a regular street address. But we had to give detailed instructions how to get to our house back then. Just giving the address didn't do much good unless you knew the postal route.
 
I like to argue with my GPS in my car. I am always (usually) right. Meaning I already reviewed the route I want to take. Like for instance going from here to Albuquerque, on the interstate in the middle of nowhere, my GPS says "take next exit". One day I did just to see what happens. The GPS, named Miss Daisy, then says "go 100 feet, then take the entrance to the interstate". :mad2:

My auto GPS calls the runway "Airplane Road".

For some reason years ago, here where I live, the Post Office decided to change the addresses of what's called the downtown area. That really confuses people and my GPS. Of course the people that have lived here for the last 100 years know exactly where they are going. "Turn left one block after the dead buffalo"..... of course that buffalo died in 1937.....
 
That is more a byproduct of how towns are built than routing software. Not sure when the first routing algorithms were created but they have the same basic logic. Draw a straight line. Find the lowest functional classes that intersect (fc1 = restricted access highway, fc5= goat trail) and create a route. Some trimming of alternatives based on total distance. If you got traffic, that is calculated after the first few routes are selected, and broadcast traffic granularity stinks (smartphones easily win here). Coincidentally the lower functional classes 2&3 get lots of cars and thus stores get built. And now it feels like your routes are biased towards malls. The one thing that drove me nuts when working on routing is there is little data for stop lights and certainly not timings. It is slowly being developed but for now traffic data is the closest approximation for number of stoplights.
 
I do like my Garmin Nuvi on long highway trips. Last year we drove KC - CO - KC - NC - KC. I've driven the KC - CO route enough times over the years I know where everything is. The KC - NC route was another story. I was pulling a UHaul so my speeds and MPH were lower than normal. I could set the GPS to show me lists of rest stops and gas stations along my route, sorted by distance. That info, along with the miles-to-empty display on the dash, helped a lot for planning stops.
 
I also like the Nuvi, and it also gets traffic information and reroutes on the fly, after asking me to take the change. Cell phones have the latest maps but sometimes seem to need time to get the map loaded after I land. The Nuvi has maps loaded and ready, though I do need to update them periodically. I was particularly happy having maps on the GPS when I found my data plan didn't work in Canada 2 weeks back.
 
masloki said:
The one thing that drove me nuts when working on routing is there is little data for stop lights and certainly not timings. It is slowly being developed but for now traffic data is the closest approximation for number of stoplights.
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That's really surprising with most of the big players in the smartphone routing apps also sending regular location, speed, and distance from the app to the server.

Seems like the data is there to mine out exactly how long vehicles using those apps are sitting at intersections, whether or not it has a traffic light. Also seems possible to see when routing to make all right turns in heavy traffic would be advantageous for intersections without traffic lights. (e.g. "Every time we route a vehicle to make a left turn here during rush hour, it sits waiting to cross for multiple minutes. This therefore isn't the best route during high traffic volume times...")

The apps already know the average speed through traffic jam areas, for example, and how long of a delay to expect when bumper to bumper starts.
 
denverpilot said:
That's really surprising with most of the big players in the smartphone routing apps also sending regular location, speed, and distance from the app to the server.

Seems like the data is there to mine out exactly how long vehicles using those apps are sitting at intersections, whether or not it has a traffic light. Also seems possible to see when routing to make all right turns in heavy traffic would be advantageous for intersections without traffic lights. (e.g. "Every time we route a vehicle to make a left turn here during rush hour, it sits waiting to cross for multiple minutes. This therefore isn't the best route during high traffic volume times...")

The apps already know the average speed through traffic jam areas, for example, and how long of a delay to expect when bumper to bumper starts.
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Note: I haven't been in the mapping business for a couple years. You are referring to probe points, gps location+Speed+heading which gets matched back to a base map. That is aggregated to create traffic, real time and historical. Google probably has the the most based on android devices out there and owning the map. Actually grabbing all valid maneuvers then scoring their quality by day of week and time is certainly doable, and Waze would likely be the ones trying it out as they got creamed for the "Waze left" a couple years back. But yeah, routing quality vs base map vs traffic data is still in its infancy.
 
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