By Charles Miller
This week, it was not with great pleasure that my sister and I have spent hours driving hundreds of miles on Houston, Texas, freeways, where the average speed is 45 miles per hour: that is, half the time 15 mph, the other half 75 mph, and rarely anything in between. Not knowing the city well, we have relied on map apps on cellphones with voice narration in order to get around. The calm voice announces “keep left” or “in 300 feet, turn right” or “stalled vehicle ahead.” We named her “Chatty Cathy.”
Combining the Global Positioning System (GPS) with databases of street maps allows modern cellphones to let you concentrate on driving while being guided to your destination. I am sure that is how the system works most of the time, but my first experience using the technology in the high-pressure situation of navigating an unfamiliar city was not without its issues. I also had the opportunity for a week to use Android and Apple phones side by side to see how they compared. They were comparable.
The first scare Chatty Cathy gave us, and she did this several times, was when she said, “Turn left,” and that would have sent us the wrong way down a freeway exit ramp. In due course, we figured out when Chatty said, “Turn left,” what she really meant was, “Take your time, look left, and if you see oncoming traffic, skip that turn, go to the next left, and that should be the freeway entrance ramp.” Some of those “turn here” instructions came a little early, but once you get moving at high speed on the freeway, the exact opposite was the case. Chatty sometimes did not give quite enough advance notice of upcoming turns or exits.
Missing a turn frequently led into another adventure. The smart phones would try to immediately recalculate a new route to get back on track but sometimes, at the same time we took a wrong turn, the phones lost their GPS lock, and Cathy went quiet. This happened to the Android and Apple phones at the same time, so it was probably not the fault of either company.
Another annoying thing about Chatty Cathy is her incessant insistence in directing us to use toll roads, even when that would take us miles out of the way. When we ignored her suggestion, Cathy says, “Make a U-turn then left to the toll road.” Ignore that and she pops up a notice on the screen saying, “$2.50 toll, 3 minutes faster.” This feels like high-pressure marketing to me. Call now and for no extra cost we will throw in an extra detour.
My take-away after a week of driving with Chatty Cathy is that the navigation technology is amazing but that it needs to get better. It is spot on when computing a miles-long route across town; however, when choosing between an entrance and an exit that are close to each other, Chatty can guess wrong. These issues are ones that need to be worked out before fully self-driving cars can replace a human driver. Some futurists are saying that we will all soon be riding in such autonomous self-driving cars. Whatever it is they have been drinking for lunch, pour me a glass. After an hour together with Chatty Cathy, I need a drink.
Charles Miller is a freelance computer consultant, a frequent visitor to San Miguel since 1981, and now practically a full-time resident. He may be contacted at email FAQ8@SMAguru.com.
