Agreed - IMHO favoring the pedestrian is the correct decision
The thing about London and other old cities is that no one decided. The layout grew up over centuries in an organic manner, well before automobiles. More modern cities that experienced the majority of their growth in the age of automobiles also grew during the age of centralized urban planning.
> You want to be getting over into the right hand lane soon
Granted it's not 100% accurate 100% of the time but you do often get advanced warning to change lanes - particularly on faster roads.
On my VW I have two screens on the satnav (one behind the steering wheel and one on the central entertainment system console). The entertainment system displays a map view and the other display is a turn-by-turn display. The beauty of the turn-by-turn display is it also gives a countdown (in the form of a gauge bar) until you hit a junction so if the map is a bit cluttered or there are a few junctions (or even if the junction isn't clearly visible for whatever reason), you not only get advanced warning about when you're approaching it but you can clearly see which junction it is and precisely when you'll hit it.
Sometimes I'll have that sat nav on even for routes I'm familiar with just so I get a reminder to change lanes on the busier roads and longer journeys where you might lose concentration about the route you're taking.
> You'll be making a turn up at $LANDMARK in a couple of minutes
Yeah, I've not experienced that. It would be a cool feature though.
> Or, in London, which of the 5 streets coming off the circle do you want to be taking exactly?
The sat nav in my VW explicitly gives a junction number. Eg "leave the 2nd exit". It does this both on roundabouts and on straight roads which have a cluster of exits near each other. It also has a display showing which of the multiple exits to take.
I can't emphasis enough just how good the dual-display system is. It means at any point in time you know exactly where you are and where you need to be.
Cities like London prove that a city designed for pedestrians is better than a city designed for cars, for the simple reason that cars don't scale nearly as well as pedestrians and public transport.
Somewhat ironically, successful future cities are going to look more like London than your typical large US city. More walkable areas. More car restrictions. More car exclusion.