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Comment by kennethrc | Hacker News Reader

Define "cannot navigate"? I've been driving for decades, but where I live traffic is everywhere so I don't go more than a few miles without using Waze and its real-time traffic monitoring.

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People who can't guide themselves without relying entirely on the app.

Normally, I just glance at what action I should take next (i.e. continue straight for 2km and then take a left turn at X) and then follow the road signs to do so. But I've noticed some Uber drivers and other people who keep their eyes almost permanently at the app for locating themselves, even when there's a clear GPS or network disconnection, like in an underground pass. This often results in wasted time when the app doesn’t catch up with reality, and the driver misses a turn.

I can confidently say that a car would be useless to me without gps. I can navigate the small town (10k people) I grew up in, but that’s it. I wouldn’t try to navigate the city I live in now (~350k people) in a car, beyond the street I live on. If I had to and knew gps was broken (hypothetically), then I’d try to reschedule, instead of attempting to navigate with signs and a paper map.

I could probably work with printed turn by turn instructions, but that’s about it.

And I think that probably comes close to what the other post had in mind with „cannot navigate“

You are in for a fun adventure, if you have an afternoon to yourself and no particular destination. My grandmother always began our day trips that way, in her shiny Buick. Remember to stop to rest.

That's unfathomable to me. I live in a 1kk metropolitan area and I can go basically anywhere without a navigation system, in fact I'll only pull the GPS if I'm going to some remote neighborhood.

P.S: I was born here and lived here all my life.

GPS is super-convenient when you're in an unfamiliar area. I sometimes catch myself thinking how did we ever get along without it. But we did. You just looked at a map before you set off, noted street names and turns, and paid attention. You would do the same thing and manage pretty well if you had to.

Of course it's convenient. But I learned to drive before we had it, and learned to find my way around without it. Maps helped, but you can do a lot with logic and by understanding direction.

You don't ever walk in your city without gps? Wouldn't you know the streets after a while?

Lots of people don't live in walkable cities. There's no realistic way they'd get to where they're going by walking. They might walk their neighborhood and know that, but these days lots of people don't even bother walking around their neighborhood.

So they'll end up driving everywhere they go. Work, groceries, restaurants, etc. Always driving. Many won't go down paths that weren't previously suggested by their GPS. And often those destinations aren't designed to be walkable either. Massive parking lots separating the various storefronts. Corporate campuses completely surrounded by a sea of parking lots and garages. Nowhere to walk.

That said, there's still exploring possible in a car-centric place. I tend to take alternate paths to get places, purposefully "get lost" driving around, and explore places I've never been before. But that has costs and lots of people don't bother doing that.

I do, but only for things in my immediate area. Stuff like grocery shopping, haircuts, doctors appointments, etc. Those are all reachable on foot and I know how to get there, because I do it regularly. But the first few times I used gps to find it. Now I know the route.

But that doesn’t help me for anything beyond that radius and probably not even there, because those routes go through parks and other stuff, so the car routes would be different.

Find your way around an unfamiliar city or area without google maps or similar.

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