Satnav has its place, its place IMHO is as a handy pocket sized street map of the country.

Its also a great gadget to let it run alongside you keeping a beady eye on your route, its great for spotting unmarked roads and unsigned in town roundabouts and as a countdown advisor for upcoming turnings, and it comes into its own as you approach a destination in a strange area,

However, a driver should plan their own route by looking at a real map large enough to see the obvious alternatives, and if you have traffic on the satnav that can be really useful...but you have to be a bit cagey and still plan your own diversions, seeing as everyone and their dog has a sat nav if there's a major route closure then everyone and their dog will be taking the same alternatives suggested by the nav with obvious results...the canny driver thinks laterally and comes up with their own alternatives.

I almost never use the satnav as a nav, instead i don't program any destination but just use it in 'traffic' mode independently to keep an eye on all possible routes ahead.

Edited by gordonbennet on 13/08/2016 at 22:29

Did you have a smartphone?

You could have used Google Maps which is better than tomtom imo. It calculates the traffic on your route and will take you the fastest route, all real time. Its very impressive and free!

It's down to personal preference, I think. I don't need the satnav for most UK journeys but the traffic warnings have saved me many lengthy delays.

Also I drive in Europe a lot, and having the satnav take me straight to the hotel saves a lot of stress. Most of the current Garmins have BlueTooth handsfree if you don't already have it in the car.

Also, they can work out fuel consumption for journey planning so you can plan fuel stops ahead, find nearby hotels, cafés, and petrol stations. The latter was vital on my last car which only had a 300 mile tank range.

SatNavs are good if you drive alone, without the co-pilot 'reading' a map and sending you down farm tracks. :-)

I find just having the map on the screen handy when I am in an unfamiliar area as it gives the speed limit for the road you are on. Not always well signposted or obvious.

I often keep the nav on (muted) even when I know where I’m going. More than once the ‘forward information’ regarding traffic or other problems has saved me hours of sitting in queues. Fortunately the Saabs system is quite good in this respect as it warns of problems ahead even when no route is programmed.

Thats exactly how i do things in my lorry, fortunately the industrial sized commercial Garmins recently fitted (also including telematics, electronic messaging and a host of spyware/grassing software) have digi traffic without destination facility, which has also solved a years old problem for me, because nothing ever replaced the original TrafficMaster YQ unit as a stand alone national traffic monitor, and now finally i have such a system again, the icing on the cake being i didn't have to buy it..:-)

Pity Garmin's technical dept (whom the helpful chap at Halfords asked) don't know that high spec digi traffic models don't need a destination to work effectively, indeed if anything it works better without a destination as you can scan the whole country in seconds and just adjust your current position as you proceed.

Edited by gordonbennet on 15/08/2016 at 14:41