this isn't about privacy. I literally charge my phone less, because not only does gps coming on randomly eat up battery - when it has data to collect from random apps they make a data connection and send stuff home. I could care less about going back, tracking my location history, and correlating it with other data. I have a life, and gps on, after a day of the phone sitting there on standby, eats an extra 5% of battery.
turning gps on before i launch maps is 1 extra tap on the toggle on my home screen.
I think the one with a traumatic experience here is you - one that prevents you from seeing very basic logic for the use case of GPS off.