Lots of comments, both pro and con. Here is mine. A GPS is a tool, nothing more, nothing less. If someone is so stupid as to drive into a river because the GPS thought there was a road, there, they are the same sort of idiot who will get in an accident for some other reason. No matter what the GPS says, the operator of the vehicle should be using two other tools, at all times - they are called eyes and a brain. When they misuse their tools, bad things happen.
I frequently take rydes down roads I've never traveled, before, just to see where they go - trust me, in West Virginia, you can easily get lost, especially when you have no destination in mind as you ryde, and keep taking turns, "just because" - at the end of a day like that, all I have to do is tell my GPS to take me home and it tells me how to get there.
My Zumo 660 lets me avoid highways, unpaved roads, seasonal closure roads - just a matter of pushing a button in settings. Sometimes I'm in a hurry and using highways is my choice (last September, I had to get home in a hurry and I was 600 miles away - the trip that took two leisurely days on back roads on the way outbound, had me home before dark using interstates.
When I was ryding back from Arizona, across New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma where gas stops tend to be farther apart, the neat little feature that told me how far, and in what direction the nearest gas station was, helped a lot - sometimes I'd top off the tank because my GPS said that the next gas station was 130 miles away, and I was at 3/4 of a tank - and I didn't want to take the chance to run out - and other times, I was reassured that a station was 50 miles down the road, and I could keep rolling.
I've used Google Maps and Waze on my phone, but my phone isn't waterproof, and my GPS is. Also, I'd rather be using the motorcycle power to run the GPS than be running down my phone battery using an app that requires GPS - yup - when you use your phone app, like Waze, you are using GPS. That sucks up the battery.
There is a subset of people who claim to not like the technology, so they swear by maps - I assume, that their grandfathers stuck to horses when motorcycles were first invented! :joke:
If you have a GPS, you don't HAVE to use it all the time - as I said, it is just a tool - but there are times, when nothing works better than a tool designed for a specific purpose.
Whatever you use to find your way around, it isn't right or wrong - it is what you want to use, and that is your right - it doesn't make other people wrong.
Enjoy the ryde.
hyea:
