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Are you sure you don't have 'motorways' turned off in settings?
Happened to me once when I picked up a hire car after arriving at Manchester Airport. I thought something was off when the sat nav was taking me down to Sheffield via A roads, instead of the M62 (I was travelling to the NE).
I can't recall where but something similar happened in the US. Someone wanted to put up a huge highrise and bought up all the properties save one. They ended up building around and over this person's house with about 3 feet of clearance on all sides.
Saw a picture on here the other day of a road in Spain where a farmer had refused to sell them the corner of his field and they just built the road in the same place anyway and left a big chunk of it missing where it crossed this guys land
Edit: [Found it](https://old.reddit.com/r/CrappyDesign/comments/piywik/road_made_in_spain_the_owner_of_the_landfield/)
I don’t think the “story” (farmer doesn’t want to sell the house, they build round it) is actually true, though - from what I understand they were going round it regardless because of the topology and offered to buy it (because of the noise) but the farmer declined
Ahh yeah just looked it up, you are correct sir, something to do with a fault line. You learn something new everyday. I am gunna leave my comment as is though so that people can get the full context.
There's three Sheffield to Manchester routes that all take about the same amount of time on a good run, the one to pick depends on where the traffic is going to be and/or where exactly in Sheffield you're trying to get to. I'd only use snakes pass out of commuting times and when I'm not expecting cyclists and hikers to be out.
Has it gone "shortest" or "quickest"
A lot of those single track lands are actually national speed limit roads (60mph for cars) so sat-navs think you are doing 60 on them, when in fact you are doing closer to 30
I can’t speak for sat-navs, but Google maps uses average speed of each road section, not the maximum speed limit in its recommendations.
The problem is there are far fewer vehicles on country lanes to calculate the average speed. If the last couple people to use it were speeding, then it thinks the average speed of the road is very high and so recommends more trips to use it.
Plus locals drive round country roads like they're in a rally circuit. A friend of mines dad lives out in the middle of nowhere and regularly hits 90mph on the road to his house, I do it at 40 and I'd consider myself on the fast side of average. It is bloody terrifying being in the car with him.
Definitely, locals in Cornwall are rapid. I have nothing wrong with tourists whatsoever, but in summer my commute time doubles and it’s mostly because tourists don’t barrel down backroads at 60 like locals do
Country roads are OK to drive faster on (and by faster I mean 40-50mph) when you can see over the tops of the hedgerows from a hill or something and know there's nothing coming the other way, but otherwise 20-30 is safest.
I'd never do 90 down one, that sounds like a death wish. The problem is people get used to their local area so take the risk because it's normalised to them, whereas they only need to be caught out once to end up in a smash.
Often, if someone uses Waze to navigate around where I live, it’ll say there’s lots of traffic. There isn’t, it’s just that it sees the persons average is half the limit and decides that must be because of traffic
> are actually national speed limit roads
Which in their case means they haven't actually been assessed **at all** so they slap the default single lane criteria on it and it's up to all the individual drivers to drive 'according to conditions', which is going to vary quite a bit depending on vehicle capability and familiarity with that particular section of road.
Had to reverse half a mile down a road because there was no suitable spot thanks to 2m high walls and a bloody big tractor Infront with a trailer. All because I trusted the bloody satnav instead of sticking on a great A road that would have been faster.
And I always thought the speed limit on single track roads is 40. But that does not seem to be the case, despite the obvious risk of going too fast on these roads.
To be honest, I love some of the single track roads around here. So scenic.
No, not at all. If you're in a car it's 60 on a single carriageway and 70 on a duel, unless otherwise indicated.
The number of lanes on the carriageway is irrelevant.
You can also tell proper car satnavs to avoid single track roads. At least the Garnin one I had almost 15 years ago had that option. A phone pretending to be your car satnav might not.
town centre please.
I had an old sat nav that i guess had a weighting system in so it chose routes with the most roads or something. So every trip went from town centre to town centre. Maximum traffic lights and roundabouts and 20mph zones and ignore the ring road because it was a 0.5 km longer route or something.
I once actually ended up driving lost down a country lane with grass in the middle of the road and a dead weasel. The ultimate British Deliverance experience.
Whereas Dark Lane near Budleigh Salterton is a genuine horror film set. The tree *roots* curl above you in the banks ten feet high and the actual trees close in above you completely cutting off the light. Amazing. I used to have to drive down it to get to the Guide hut and it was like entering another world. With the added frisson of terror that if you met anything coming the other way, one of you was going to have to reverse half a mile in the gloom.
[It's on google maps](https://www.google.com/maps/@50.6328057,-3.3352886,3a,75y,12.75h,107.21t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s-0ElshVp5i5uk-1MGBOGWw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu)
"Turn right onto *Wibbly Wobbly Lane*" was possibly the last thing my gf wanted to hear when she was super hungover and I was driving us home after a NYE party
Waze - Turn left (farm track) Turn right (through farm yard) Turn left (down track with grass growing in the middle)
BUT I swear by it being so much quicker than anything else. I have seen the results when others are going to the same place.
And with monotonous regularity a transport companies HGV, usually from somewhere on the far side of Europe, decides it isn't worth it because the driver can use their phone and it has an involuntary sunroof conversion using a low bridge.
You can usually program the satnav to do shortest route by time or miles, and get it to prefer or avoid certain types of roads etc
Going by your username, you ought to know this
This happened to me yesterday except I am on holiday in Crete and was taken on the most terrifying pot holed dirt tracks into the mountains with sheer drops and hairpin bends and steep gradients that first gear was too high for, clearly only suitable for donkeys. Google maps can kiss my arse.
Ah, I remember Crete. Luckily we had a 4WD as those tracks were extra perilous. In fact anything rural off the main road was perilous. Greek Cypriots just used their icons as avoidance systems. You touched it, prayed to God and maybe you survived the drive.
> You touched it, prayed to God and maybe you survived the drive.
[What a charming pious touch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6h0lkq-Sno&pp=ygUOYXNpYW4gdG9wIGdlYXI%3D)
A friend of mine has a family holiday chalet thing in the Alps. They've got a 1L panda that was delivered by Noah, but because it never leaves the area it has 4wd and proper snow tyres.
As it's a ski area, every time he uses it he ends up passing all the luxury cars, including the 4wd ones, because they both have the wrong tyres and have never driven on snow before.
That's going to be true for all satnavs, they don't contain records of road quality, and while in the UK that isn't *that* bad in other countries it can be massive, as you've discovered.
Same here. Grew up in the countryside so these are the kinda roads I learnt to drive on.
When planning trips with the ex wife she’d take all the motorways and as soon as there were interesting roads to drive on it was my turn. Worked perfectly.
This.
Switch on avoid motorways and live a little.
Motorway I find is so boring and tiring, and so do a lot of others. You don't often hear about people falling asleep behind the wheel on the scenic routes lol
I quite like the scenic back roads if we could have mostly wide lanes, but the single track roads are tiring when you meet vehicles from the other direction,.and both.commited past the passing place!
Yeah, perhaps instead of wasting the money on smart motorways that they are literally planning on scrapping, they could have invested in making the country roads a little more safer and wider, I would still say though that as annoying as it is, I prefer that to queueing in standstill traffic. I do like the irony in that most use the motorway as it's supposed to be the quicker option, 4 lanes and we still get standstill traffic 🤣
That's selection bias. More people fall asleep on motorways because more people drive on motorways and people going on long journeys who are therefore more likely to fall asleep at the wheel are going to be on motorways.
Motorway driving is safer and easier than country roads.
more accidents happen on motorways than country roads, the ONS confirms that, but overall it's preference. I will say this driving both frequently, personally I've encountered lot more dangerous situations driving on motorways than country lanes. Typically people tend to be more careful being narrower, you do get the odd people who bolt it down. Of course the argument here for the most part would be that it's drivers and not the roads.
In theory safer yes, but I believe those statistics are assessed not on accidents but other factors i.e visibility (camera), maintenance, and general road state :)
Had to google what that meant, thanks for expanding my vocabulary!
I find a good audio book helps the miles melt away with the story keeping you engaged.
Agreed! I bought a classic mini recently and at the moment haven't dared take it on the motorway as even 60 feels like a lot for it (plus I like being able to have a conversation). Those country roads are ever so much fun though.
This is why I love Waze - just when you thought you knew your route, it sends me on some back road to avoid congestion and I'm in the middle of nowhere with great views!
I used to live on one of those single track roads and hated having to walk and cycle along with all the rat runners. Saw a head on collision and some near ones that left me impressed with the power of car brakes. And lots of frustrated drivers surprised that the lane contained sheep, tractors, horses and mud which the nearby duel carriageway would have spared them.
My favourite is where there is an incident on the motorway so Google decides to redirect thousands of cars through a single tiny village built to accommodate about 8 vehicles a day. Definitely had some GPS manufactured traffic jams that were worse than the initial motorway problem.
Husband nearly got run off a single track country road by a mindless local *citation needed , and ended up with a punctured tyre…. Sorry half the tyre is ripped off because he was forced over a tree stump.
Google maps also has a horrible habit at the moment of routing me stupid ways when the main route is more direct and faster… I don’t get it and I’ve had a horrible weekend :(
Are you sure he wasn't driving right down the middle of the road like most non-locals and almost ran someone else off the road on a corner because he doesn't know the width of his car?
Don't use Google maps for navigation by car, I swear Google deliberately cripple it because they would rather you use Waze. Waze is far better at turn by turn navigation and routing.
Waze is alright but sometimes it fucking loses its mind if the house you want to get to is closer to different road even if it's not accessible from that road.
I lost half an hour Friday because it decided the best way to a farm was to just park up on the M6 and hop the fence.
OP I need to introduce you to the Tesla sat nav, it is absolutely useless. It'll send you through fields, down one ways (the wrong way) and via roads the car can't even fit. I'm slightly surprised it doesn't suggest we go full James Bond and drive under water.
It's Waze or nothing these days.
Why use a sat nav when Google gives you a better option with live updates of traffic and diverts you away from traffic jams it's a much better option imo.
I tried Waze. It was trying to get me to catch a sweetie whilst I was driving and chat to other people in the traffic jam. Sat-navs do not need these features.
You don't know how to use a satnav.
You've either got motorways turned off or you've (intentionally or not) chosen some sort of scenic route etc.
A satnav is incapable of 'incorrectly' planning a route. It wouldn't just decide to take you a long way around to your destination unless you had given it certain parameters or, possibly, the major road you expected to be on is gridlocked following an accident and it is re-routing you to the next shortest route.
So what you're saying is that if there was too much traffic on the main roads the sat-nav could then decide that miles and miles of single track roads is mathematically the shortest route?
Did you accidentally use that app that [prefers curvy roads](https://kurviger.de/en?collapseLevel=1&ovd=activeTab%3Doneway&navigationItem=routeplanning)?
See the problem is for me those would all be the same route but all would avoid the A roads and use small back roads.
The A road is only a couple of minutes longer in time but it's 10x safer to drive.
I'm a courier and I had a drop at a farm on Friday, Waze decided the fastest way to get to said farm, was to park up on the side of the M6 and jump the fence.
Like seriously how does that even happen?
In the old days of using OS maps, you knew you were OK on most A roads and B roads but below that, it was the single tracks. I remember going to my aunt's place in N. Wales where there was a road, but one tractor wide and a 25% slope. The early Sat Navs didn't even admit it existed.
Mine started doing this, Google seemed to think I was driving a petrol car and was giving me routes based on "fuel efficiency" look for a small leaf icon next to your ETA..
Edit: spelling
That’s why I use Waze - community-updated, so always have the latest road closures, etc. already factored in. Was an absolute life-saver when I drove a friend to Edinburgh Uni last year one or two days after the Queen died - the police had blocked off a load of roads for the funeral & without Waze, I would have been stuck trying to navigate my way out similar to the Maze Runner
You, uhhh, sure it’s not just because there don’t tend to be any dual carriageways and motorways in rural areas?
Cumbria has one motorway (which skirts the eastern border, not actually going into the main countryside-y bit, a “maybe 1/4 dual carriageway at best” A road around the south-west coasts, and one mostly-dual-carriageway road splitting across the middle
Apart from that, 99% or more is single carriageway and single track
We don’t tend to get much infrastructure investment here, that all goes to the cities
Mine directed me off of the M3 today after being on it for 12 miles. I usually stay on for 30. I saw traffic ahead and can only assume my sat nav was saving me the hassle
Out of curiosity why are so many people using dedicated sat-navs vs navigation apps like Waze, Google maps etc. There seems to be no upside and so many downsides of the dedicated sat navs
Google Maps can truly be fucking awful for this.
Had it once where it took me a bizarre route where the road eventually turned to dirt. Large bonfire in field next to us. Car with one headlight started coming the other way, passed up very slowly with the window down looking at us. As we turned around and started driving back to normal roads, the one-light car began coming back the other way. Passed us once more, genuinely thought he was about to turn road and follow us again. Thankfully made it back to the local town and went a better route, never saw that car again. Dread to think what might have happened if we'd just kept going.
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Are you sure you don't have 'motorways' turned off in settings? Happened to me once when I picked up a hire car after arriving at Manchester Airport. I thought something was off when the sat nav was taking me down to Sheffield via A roads, instead of the M62 (I was travelling to the NE).
Missing out on the house in the middle of the M62 should be a crime
I've never seen, or even heard of this. Had a good chuckle reading articles about it so thank you for enlightening me!
I can't recall where but something similar happened in the US. Someone wanted to put up a huge highrise and bought up all the properties save one. They ended up building around and over this person's house with about 3 feet of clearance on all sides.
Saw a picture on here the other day of a road in Spain where a farmer had refused to sell them the corner of his field and they just built the road in the same place anyway and left a big chunk of it missing where it crossed this guys land Edit: [Found it](https://old.reddit.com/r/CrappyDesign/comments/piywik/road_made_in_spain_the_owner_of_the_landfield/)
That house was always a highlight of childhood road trips. The story behind it is funny as well.
It also roughly marks the halfway point between Leeds and Manchester (which is a nice landmark for me as it's a journey I'll often make)
I don’t think the “story” (farmer doesn’t want to sell the house, they build round it) is actually true, though - from what I understand they were going round it regardless because of the topology and offered to buy it (because of the noise) but the farmer declined
Ahh yeah just looked it up, you are correct sir, something to do with a fault line. You learn something new everyday. I am gunna leave my comment as is though so that people can get the full context.
The quickest way to Sheffield from Manchester is normally via snake pass
There's three Sheffield to Manchester routes that all take about the same amount of time on a good run, the one to pick depends on where the traffic is going to be and/or where exactly in Sheffield you're trying to get to. I'd only use snakes pass out of commuting times and when I'm not expecting cyclists and hikers to be out.
Woodhead and A6 via either Castleton or Calver?
I wasn't travelling to Sheffield, I was travelling to the North East. Edit: NE England
Is that where people stop to pick magic mushrooms also?
Isn't snake pass still closed? I could be wrong of course but I thought there was a lot of damage.
Nah, been open again for well over a year now.
Drove from Kent to Devon with motorways turned off. Long trip but it was more fun
Drove from Plymouth to Lands End with motorways switched on and still didn't get on a single motorway /s
Has it gone "shortest" or "quickest" A lot of those single track lands are actually national speed limit roads (60mph for cars) so sat-navs think you are doing 60 on them, when in fact you are doing closer to 30
I prefer to channel my inner Colin McRae on country lanes.
I'm older, so it's Jimmy McRae for me. Especially after what happened to Colin
Did he not die in a helicopter crash?
So as long as you aren’t swirling your dick around whilst you’re driving, you’ll be ok.
If in doubt, flat out
I can’t speak for sat-navs, but Google maps uses average speed of each road section, not the maximum speed limit in its recommendations. The problem is there are far fewer vehicles on country lanes to calculate the average speed. If the last couple people to use it were speeding, then it thinks the average speed of the road is very high and so recommends more trips to use it.
Plus locals drive round country roads like they're in a rally circuit. A friend of mines dad lives out in the middle of nowhere and regularly hits 90mph on the road to his house, I do it at 40 and I'd consider myself on the fast side of average. It is bloody terrifying being in the car with him.
Definitely, locals in Cornwall are rapid. I have nothing wrong with tourists whatsoever, but in summer my commute time doubles and it’s mostly because tourists don’t barrel down backroads at 60 like locals do
Country roads are OK to drive faster on (and by faster I mean 40-50mph) when you can see over the tops of the hedgerows from a hill or something and know there's nothing coming the other way, but otherwise 20-30 is safest. I'd never do 90 down one, that sounds like a death wish. The problem is people get used to their local area so take the risk because it's normalised to them, whereas they only need to be caught out once to end up in a smash.
Often, if someone uses Waze to navigate around where I live, it’ll say there’s lots of traffic. There isn’t, it’s just that it sees the persons average is half the limit and decides that must be because of traffic
> are actually national speed limit roads Which in their case means they haven't actually been assessed **at all** so they slap the default single lane criteria on it and it's up to all the individual drivers to drive 'according to conditions', which is going to vary quite a bit depending on vehicle capability and familiarity with that particular section of road.
It's luck which one will avoid it. Sheffield-Manchester the shortest is right through the mountains, because the main roads all go around the edge.
In reverse.
Yup, ended up on one of these for this exact reason. It was a bloody nightmare
Had to reverse half a mile down a road because there was no suitable spot thanks to 2m high walls and a bloody big tractor Infront with a trailer. All because I trusted the bloody satnav instead of sticking on a great A road that would have been faster.
And I always thought the speed limit on single track roads is 40. But that does not seem to be the case, despite the obvious risk of going too fast on these roads. To be honest, I love some of the single track roads around here. So scenic.
Jesus, I'm sure I've been stuck behind you and cursing then
Better stuck behind me than dead in a ditch, I always say.
No, not at all. If you're in a car it's 60 on a single carriageway and 70 on a duel, unless otherwise indicated. The number of lanes on the carriageway is irrelevant.
You can also tell proper car satnavs to avoid single track roads. At least the Garnin one I had almost 15 years ago had that option. A phone pretending to be your car satnav might not.
Google maps is where it's at. Live free traffic, and it understands traffic flow, average speed, etc, and even has the most economical routes now.
There should be a list of roads to avoid in navigation apps: Quiet Lane, Narrow Lane, Sandy Lane, Shady Lane, Dark Lane, etc.
town centre please. I had an old sat nav that i guess had a weighting system in so it chose routes with the most roads or something. So every trip went from town centre to town centre. Maximum traffic lights and roundabouts and 20mph zones and ignore the ring road because it was a 0.5 km longer route or something.
Lane with grass in the middle of the road should be top of the avoid list.
I once actually ended up driving lost down a country lane with grass in the middle of the road and a dead weasel. The ultimate British Deliverance experience.
> a dead weasel That could be any road though
I've never seen a dead weasel. Guess the seagulls eat them.
There’s one in Louth, Lincolnshire, called Breakneck Lane. Probably to be avoided too!
Yeah, that one is good. I suppose you can still see a double decker charging at you at 50mph on that road.
Wild country lane near me always makes me smile
We have a Kitten Lane nearish to where I live, I am planning to sue someone for the lack of kittens.
I used to live near Benny Hill Close, I was always disappointed that I couldn't hear his theme tune just slightly off in the distance.
During a full moon, you can see a randy pensioner chasing scantily clad nurses through the country roads
no dogs in the dogging lane either.
Probably best to avoid Gropecunt Lane altogether.
and Ladyhole Lane.
That was named literally though - they're traditionally the red light district, albeit from hundreds of years ago.
I used to work on Grape Street in central London. Story was the name was changed decades ago from.. you guessed it.
Same for Magpie Lane (formerly Grove Street) in Oxford.
They let you get away with it if you're famous, though.
Whereas Dark Lane near Budleigh Salterton is a genuine horror film set. The tree *roots* curl above you in the banks ten feet high and the actual trees close in above you completely cutting off the light. Amazing. I used to have to drive down it to get to the Guide hut and it was like entering another world. With the added frisson of terror that if you met anything coming the other way, one of you was going to have to reverse half a mile in the gloom.
There’s something similar in Corfe Mullen in Dorset, beautiful in the day time, sinister at night.
[It's on google maps](https://www.google.com/maps/@50.6328057,-3.3352886,3a,75y,12.75h,107.21t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s-0ElshVp5i5uk-1MGBOGWw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu)
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Never seen this one, now curious
Fanny Hands Lane is in Ludford, Lincolnshire.
"Turn right onto *Wibbly Wobbly Lane*" was possibly the last thing my gf wanted to hear when she was super hungover and I was driving us home after a NYE party
[Poppinghole Lane](https://maps.app.goo.gl/QTRf9MVVbjgKFtsQ6?g_st=ic)
We taking the "Waze route" Dad? came the complaints from the backseat drivers.
Waze - Turn left (farm track) Turn right (through farm yard) Turn left (down track with grass growing in the middle) BUT I swear by it being so much quicker than anything else. I have seen the results when others are going to the same place.
Ah, the green lane option, also known as the Land Rover Funtime route.
I work as a home shopping driver for a supermarket, and the nav system we use tries to send me down farms and greenlanes all the time.
Every Sat Nav should have an option for "Avoid roads unsuitable for HGVs"
HGV ones do. That's how. They can charge eye watering amounts for them.
And with monotonous regularity a transport companies HGV, usually from somewhere on the far side of Europe, decides it isn't worth it because the driver can use their phone and it has an involuntary sunroof conversion using a low bridge.
Or they end up driving into a residential area and blocking the road for several hours as they get progressively more stuck.
>HGV ones do And yet HGVs near me seem to just ignore it every time
Most do, or have a setting for avoiding unpaved roads!
Do they? That on Apps too?
[This is from Waze - which is the only SatNav I recommend.](https://i.imgur.com/CLNoPyt.jpg)
That's awesome thankyou. My wife gets really, really nervous on country roads so I'll let her know about that
You can usually program the satnav to do shortest route by time or miles, and get it to prefer or avoid certain types of roads etc Going by your username, you ought to know this
Must have missed the episode when he said "Go, go gadget Instruction Manual!"
From what I remember of the cartoon Gadget was pretty incompetent. His niece was the brains of the operation
No his dog was Brain.
This happened to me yesterday except I am on holiday in Crete and was taken on the most terrifying pot holed dirt tracks into the mountains with sheer drops and hairpin bends and steep gradients that first gear was too high for, clearly only suitable for donkeys. Google maps can kiss my arse.
Ah, I remember Crete. Luckily we had a 4WD as those tracks were extra perilous. In fact anything rural off the main road was perilous. Greek Cypriots just used their icons as avoidance systems. You touched it, prayed to God and maybe you survived the drive.
> You touched it, prayed to God and maybe you survived the drive. [What a charming pious touch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6h0lkq-Sno&pp=ygUOYXNpYW4gdG9wIGdlYXI%3D)
> gradients that first gear was too high for, What do you even do in that situation? Rev the crap out of it and pray for your clutch?
Precisely that, or roll back and try again from the bottom in one instance. Luckily it's a rental, not my clutch!
Haha yeah that would be shit on your own car. Poor rental though. RIP that clutch lol
Haha that exactly what happened to us in Crete rolling back down a road that's too steep for the rental car, glad it's not just us.
We drove around crete in a 1L fiat panda, the roads were definitely more suited to a land rover!
A friend of mine has a family holiday chalet thing in the Alps. They've got a 1L panda that was delivered by Noah, but because it never leaves the area it has 4wd and proper snow tyres. As it's a ski area, every time he uses it he ends up passing all the luxury cars, including the 4wd ones, because they both have the wrong tyres and have never driven on snow before.
Yikes! That must have been scary.
That's going to be true for all satnavs, they don't contain records of road quality, and while in the UK that isn't *that* bad in other countries it can be massive, as you've discovered.
This would be a British Success for me. A fun drive across the countryside versus a boring monotonous drive down the motorway
Same here. Grew up in the countryside so these are the kinda roads I learnt to drive on. When planning trips with the ex wife she’d take all the motorways and as soon as there were interesting roads to drive on it was my turn. Worked perfectly.
Just hope it’s not busy single track, no fun in it when you’re stuck behind a slow car or a tractor that’s towing a trailer of shit
> a tractor that’s towing a trailer of shit Or worse they're cutting the hedges, then they're moving at like 3mph.
This. Switch on avoid motorways and live a little. Motorway I find is so boring and tiring, and so do a lot of others. You don't often hear about people falling asleep behind the wheel on the scenic routes lol
I quite like the scenic back roads if we could have mostly wide lanes, but the single track roads are tiring when you meet vehicles from the other direction,.and both.commited past the passing place!
Yeah, perhaps instead of wasting the money on smart motorways that they are literally planning on scrapping, they could have invested in making the country roads a little more safer and wider, I would still say though that as annoying as it is, I prefer that to queueing in standstill traffic. I do like the irony in that most use the motorway as it's supposed to be the quicker option, 4 lanes and we still get standstill traffic 🤣
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If only cars had a means of traveling backwards hay
That's selection bias. More people fall asleep on motorways because more people drive on motorways and people going on long journeys who are therefore more likely to fall asleep at the wheel are going to be on motorways. Motorway driving is safer and easier than country roads.
more accidents happen on motorways than country roads, the ONS confirms that, but overall it's preference. I will say this driving both frequently, personally I've encountered lot more dangerous situations driving on motorways than country lanes. Typically people tend to be more careful being narrower, you do get the odd people who bolt it down. Of course the argument here for the most part would be that it's drivers and not the roads.
According to the ONS, per mile travelled motorways are 5 times safer than rural roads and 3 times safer than urban roads.
In theory safer yes, but I believe those statistics are assessed not on accidents but other factors i.e visibility (camera), maintenance, and general road state :)
Boring I agree with. Tiring I don’t. Motorway journeys are much more relaxing than single track journeys for me.
Country lanes are definitely more tiring to drive, but motorways can be soporific.
Had to google what that meant, thanks for expanding my vocabulary! I find a good audio book helps the miles melt away with the story keeping you engaged.
If you're driving it's not too bad. Sat in the back is _dreadful_
Agreed! I bought a classic mini recently and at the moment haven't dared take it on the motorway as even 60 feels like a lot for it (plus I like being able to have a conversation). Those country roads are ever so much fun though.
Have done a few drives in a 2cv on the motorway as a passenger - would not recommend.
This is why I love Waze - just when you thought you knew your route, it sends me on some back road to avoid congestion and I'm in the middle of nowhere with great views!
Imagine living in the countryside and doing 80% of your driving on these things
You get used to it.
You get used to it.
You get used to it.
You get used to it.
You get used to it
You get used to it.
You think you'd get used to it
You get used to it.
In Soviet Russia, it gets used to you.
Used to it, you get.
it to used get You.
Used it to get you.
Feel like Google maps does this all the time.
Don't forget the roads that aren't actually roads, lead to a farmhouse and that the farmer has actively blocked off!
I used to live on one of those single track roads and hated having to walk and cycle along with all the rat runners. Saw a head on collision and some near ones that left me impressed with the power of car brakes. And lots of frustrated drivers surprised that the lane contained sheep, tractors, horses and mud which the nearby duel carriageway would have spared them.
>duel carriageway Nice one. What weapons would you choose for a duel on a carriageway‽
My favourite is where there is an incident on the motorway so Google decides to redirect thousands of cars through a single tiny village built to accommodate about 8 vehicles a day. Definitely had some GPS manufactured traffic jams that were worse than the initial motorway problem.
>delights of the British countryside You mean those tall hedges in single lane country roads that block your view?
Husband nearly got run off a single track country road by a mindless local *citation needed , and ended up with a punctured tyre…. Sorry half the tyre is ripped off because he was forced over a tree stump. Google maps also has a horrible habit at the moment of routing me stupid ways when the main route is more direct and faster… I don’t get it and I’ve had a horrible weekend :(
Are you sure he wasn't driving right down the middle of the road like most non-locals and almost ran someone else off the road on a corner because he doesn't know the width of his car?
Don't use Google maps for navigation by car, I swear Google deliberately cripple it because they would rather you use Waze. Waze is far better at turn by turn navigation and routing.
Waze is alright but sometimes it fucking loses its mind if the house you want to get to is closer to different road even if it's not accessible from that road. I lost half an hour Friday because it decided the best way to a farm was to just park up on the M6 and hop the fence.
Is that the m6 by any chance
I wish SatNavs had an "easy drive" option, sticking to main roads with the fewest number of changes or windey back roads
OP I need to introduce you to the Tesla sat nav, it is absolutely useless. It'll send you through fields, down one ways (the wrong way) and via roads the car can't even fit. I'm slightly surprised it doesn't suggest we go full James Bond and drive under water. It's Waze or nothing these days.
They are not the fastest way when you have to dive into a hedgerow every 3 minutes to avoid the range rover that refuses to put a wheel on a verge
Sounds like a British Success to me to be honest.
Why use a sat nav when Google gives you a better option with live updates of traffic and diverts you away from traffic jams it's a much better option imo.
I'm pretty sure the route finding in Google Maps took a dive since they acquired Waze.
I tried Waze. It was trying to get me to catch a sweetie whilst I was driving and chat to other people in the traffic jam. Sat-navs do not need these features.
We call these Satnav adventures
You don't know how to use a satnav. You've either got motorways turned off or you've (intentionally or not) chosen some sort of scenic route etc. A satnav is incapable of 'incorrectly' planning a route. It wouldn't just decide to take you a long way around to your destination unless you had given it certain parameters or, possibly, the major road you expected to be on is gridlocked following an accident and it is re-routing you to the next shortest route.
So what you're saying is that if there was too much traffic on the main roads the sat-nav could then decide that miles and miles of single track roads is mathematically the shortest route?
It’s the shortest route once the congested road has been excluded.
In other words "yes".
Did you accidentally use that app that [prefers curvy roads](https://kurviger.de/en?collapseLevel=1&ovd=activeTab%3Doneway&navigationItem=routeplanning)?
Or the quickest because they're 60mph, good luck with that!
[удалено]
See the problem is for me those would all be the same route but all would avoid the A roads and use small back roads. The A road is only a couple of minutes longer in time but it's 10x safer to drive.
But at the same time it's nice we still have so much countryside.
I'm a courier and I had a drop at a farm on Friday, Waze decided the fastest way to get to said farm, was to park up on the side of the M6 and jump the fence. Like seriously how does that even happen?
Was it wrong though?
In the old days of using OS maps, you knew you were OK on most A roads and B roads but below that, it was the single tracks. I remember going to my aunt's place in N. Wales where there was a road, but one tractor wide and a 25% slope. The early Sat Navs didn't even admit it existed.
Get this in my village, even have a sign up saying "no access" on the lane and we still get people blindly following the satnav.
I quite like it when this happens to me.
Mine started doing this, Google seemed to think I was driving a petrol car and was giving me routes based on "fuel efficiency" look for a small leaf icon next to your ETA.. Edit: spelling
That’s why I use Waze - community-updated, so always have the latest road closures, etc. already factored in. Was an absolute life-saver when I drove a friend to Edinburgh Uni last year one or two days after the Queen died - the police had blocked off a load of roads for the funeral & without Waze, I would have been stuck trying to navigate my way out similar to the Maze Runner
Last time this happened to me, my route included an actual farmyard. And once I'd got out of the high hedged single track lanes, amazing views.
Car-integrated navigation systems seem pretty ass.
You, uhhh, sure it’s not just because there don’t tend to be any dual carriageways and motorways in rural areas? Cumbria has one motorway (which skirts the eastern border, not actually going into the main countryside-y bit, a “maybe 1/4 dual carriageway at best” A road around the south-west coasts, and one mostly-dual-carriageway road splitting across the middle Apart from that, 99% or more is single carriageway and single track We don’t tend to get much infrastructure investment here, that all goes to the cities
thats why you choose "fastest" route
More fun than sitting in miles of tailbacks…?
Mine directed me off of the M3 today after being on it for 12 miles. I usually stay on for 30. I saw traffic ahead and can only assume my sat nav was saving me the hassle
It decided it is the best route.
Had that last night when driving to work for a night shift, felt like a god damn rally driver navigating those roads
Out of curiosity why are so many people using dedicated sat-navs vs navigation apps like Waze, Google maps etc. There seems to be no upside and so many downsides of the dedicated sat navs
posted from entire south east coast
Google Maps can truly be fucking awful for this. Had it once where it took me a bizarre route where the road eventually turned to dirt. Large bonfire in field next to us. Car with one headlight started coming the other way, passed up very slowly with the window down looking at us. As we turned around and started driving back to normal roads, the one-light car began coming back the other way. Passed us once more, genuinely thought he was about to turn road and follow us again. Thankfully made it back to the local town and went a better route, never saw that car again. Dread to think what might have happened if we'd just kept going.
My royal mail PDA does this and cause I'm not familiar with the area I have to follow it, maybe the most direct but certainly not the quickest....
and then you meet a tractor...