Everyone needs a GPS

Sunday, May 28, 2006

I'm in my fourth city in two weeks, and I've been once again delighted about the purchase I made about five years ago. I am the blissful owner of a Garmin GPS V, a small, portable, and now terribly ancient GPS unit. But wherever I go, I can get anywhere I want. You really need one too.

You don't need to know the area

I don't need a GPS, I know the area I drive really well

Good for you. I don't. I don't live in the city I grew up. I'm getting the hang of St. Louis, but I definitely don't know every side street and neighborhood in the area. Especially when visiting friends across a river. I'm happy that you don't have my problems.

But do you really only drive in the city you live in? I'm sure occasionally you go somewhere else. When my family all congregated in Milwaukee for my sister's graduation, they needed ongoing cell calls with native guides, but I just typed the address in and drove right there. Wherever "there" was.

GPS units reroute

If I need to go somewhere I haven't been, I can use Google Maps.

Online mapping software is great, and in theory it should be better than any static maps in a GPS unit. But online maps are terribly limited.

First, while they could be kept up to date with new construction, they usually aren't. And everyone seems to have a story of Mapquest or another service taking them left when they should have gone right. But the real problem is that you don't have your computer with you in the car!

Let's go back to Milwaukee. You've got a great set of printed maps from Google. You've just driven past your exit. What do you do? Worse, right now Milwaukee has a lot of construction. There are a lot of exits which have been closed. What do you do? What if there's been a huge accident up ahead and traffic is stop and go for the next 30 miles? What do you do?

What I do is just drive onwards, and my GPS finds a new route and tells me the next exit I can take. Or, I just get off and start heading in roughly the right direction, and the GPS will catch up and tell me how to proceed. It doesn't need to know about construction (though it would be nice) because it's sitting right on your dash and knows where you are, and can adapt to your movements. Try doing that with a piece of paper.

GPS units give you freedom from fear

Imagine where you could go, if you knew you'd always be able to find your way home. Before I had the GPS, I was like a lot of people I know. I didn't like to venture outside my comfort zone. I knew certain parts of STL or Long Island and I preferred to stick to them. It was a pain and a source of tension any time I went somewhere I didn't know.

Now, it doesn't matter. I can just follow a random path, visit a brand new destination, drive across the country to a city I couldn't have found on a map, and I know two things: I know I'll get there, and I know I'll be able to get home whenever I want to.

Driving my family around Milwaukee is stress-free, because I don't worry about getting lost. I can pick up pizza for friends in Minneapolis.

That's why you need a GPS. Soon, I'll write something up on how you can pick a unit.

Copyright © 2006 by Alan Shutko <ats@acm.org>