Day: December 24, 2006

Please Don’t Squeeze the Garmin

Posted By: Peter DavidPosted On:

With our house sitting firmly ensconced, we embarked upon our annual drive down to Kath’s parents. To save wear and tear on the family vehicle, I typically use my Amex membership rewards to pick up some huge Avis car for the voyage. And this time, just for kicks, I also opted to rent something I’d never seen before: the Garmin brand GPS.

Holy cow, how cool is this thing.

On a screen about the size of a hand-held video game, it gives you a constant view of the road up ahead of you, with a pink band of color charting your intended path. You can set it for any address in the contiguous United States and it will give you door-to-door directions, along with constant info as how much distance you’ve covered, how much further you have to go, your ETA, etc., as well as constant voice prompts courtesy of a polite female voice that we’ve dubbed “Majel.”

But that’s not all. First of all, at one point Majel informed us of an accident two miles ahead and offered to chart an alternate route, enabling us to sail around the jam. Second, when we hit a miles-long traffic back up (courtesy of an accident on the OTHER side of the road; even Majel can’t perceive rubber-necking delays), we triggered the “detour” function, got off the highway, and lost no time using the surface streets. Probably the best aspect was that, since I prefer to drive long distances at night, I was faced with impenetrable fog at 4 AM. My visibility couldn’t have been more than ten feet in front of me. No problem thanks to Majel: The display on the screen was unaffected, giving me half a mile of “visibility” as to when the road was going straight and, more important, when it was curving. It took me less than a minute to master the art of glancing between the screen and the road and consequently moved through an extremely hazardous traffic situation with complete confidence.

I don’t know that I’m going to go plunk down the retail price for one, but the rental price was certainly worth it. And if you do a lot of travelling, I can’t recommend enough having one of these gadgets.

Oh…happy holidays to anyone inclined to celebrate it.

PAD