Originally Posted by
stimpy
You always have to use your brain and not rely 100% on a GPS.
Well, that was easy on the freeway that the Tom Tom didn't think was open. I just kept driving straight and ignored the incessant demands to turn left or right!
But dealing with the Tom Tom telling me to get from a gas station in the middle of some industrial area onto to the freeway by using an exit that didn't exist any more, that was way trickier. What the normal procedure in a situation like that? I had to figure out which way to drive far enough so that it would give up on that way to get onto the freeway and pick another one. But figuring out that on my own in an area I was totally unfamiliar with, that was the challange.
One things that's annoying about the freeways in Madrid is that they don't tend to build overpasses or underpasses at many exits, or if they do, don't put entrance ramps on the other side. (And they have this issue in places in the countryside too!) So it's very tricky to figure out how to either "turn around" on a freeway, or just get back on, after exiting, and continue in the direction you were going. And when the GPS is confused about which off ramps and on ramps do and don't exist, it doesn't necessarily help that much! So I wasn't sure how to use my brain!
(Extra frustrating: Road atlases for European countries don't tend to have "metro" maps. They have the country map pages, and then they have downtown pages, but for example no pages covering the maze of freeways near the MAD airport. In a place where you have to know the exact lane to be in, because an exit splits two ways and then instanlty splits three ways again, a 1:300,000 map does no good, and that's where you a need a GPS, except if it's wrong, then what?!?)