The modern dashboard-mounted GPS unit has found a lucrative market with drivers the world over due to the convenience and portability that they offer. Yet these little gadgets also have their drawbacks. Read more about the possible disadvantages of relying on your onboard GPS while you drive and why you should never fully trust the directions that your GPS offers you.
Today’s consumer is obsessed with electronic gadgets. In fact, the word “obsessed” might not be a strong enough term to describe how most of us feel about our MP3 players, tablets, and our smartphones. Over the past few years, this obsession has expanded into our cars in the form of mobile GPS and in-car navigation.
Global Positioning Systems have been around for a long time. They are a staple accessory for the camper and the hiker, as a GPS can track your exact location on Earth via satellite. This tracking is so precise that modern GPS units can track your path from place to place whilst you drive, and they are accurate down to the very last meter. Around the turn of the century, various electronics companies saw the value of an internal car-mounted GPS unit to the driver, and so they designed GPS models made solely to map out and trace driving routes. Like all newly adapted technology, however, the car-mounted GPS unit is not perfect. You may be tempted to rely on your GPS for its portability and convenience, but even many of the top-selling and best quality models have their problems.
Your GPS May Not Always Be Accurate
GPS units are impressive pieces of technology, but they are not perfectly accurate. In theory, the electronic roadmaps that car-mounted GPS units produce are constantly updated to account for new roads, the closing of old roads, fresh construction, and place name changes. In practice, there is often a significant period of lag time between the current state of your city’s roads and the roadmap your GPS shows you. Even minor inaccuracies in the map your GPS is using can lead to your becoming completely lost and having to backtrack. If you’re trying to find a restaurant or a friend’s house, these inaccuracies can be annoying. If you’re trying to make it to a job interview in an unfamiliar part of town, they can throw you into a blind rage.
This situation is easily avoided. Simply enter your destination into Google Maps, Mapquest, or a similar map website, and write down the turns you need to take to arrive there. If your GPS tells you to take a turn onto a street with a name that you can’t find, or onto a street that doesn’t seem to exist, you’ll know right away that you’ve found an inaccuracy in your GPS roadmap, and you won’t end up driving down the wrong street and losing the right path.
You Need to Update the Maps Regularly
Because the maps on a GPS are only as reliable as the date they were published, you should always update them at least once a year. In the United States alone there are 20,000 new miles of roads added on average each year – and none of those will be on your GPS if you have not installed new maps for 12 months.
Author Credit: This article was supplied by Jenny Clairemont. Jenny currently uses a Garmin GPS to help get here from A to B – and she makes sure that it has the most up to date maps on it as possible. You can do that too so make sure to check out this Valid Garmin Map Discount Codes web page so you can buy cheap Garmin maps today.
