Wednesday, May 16, 2018

A Thousand Miles

The other day I was planning a trip on Waze and wanted to see if Waze understood the coordinates for my destination in another state. Interestingly, I received the following response after looking up and selecting my destination:


Although it is unlikely that someone would drive 1,000 miles in a single trip, even my Garmin nĂ¼vi 650 GPS (which I purchased in December 2007) allows me to calculate routes in excess of 1,000 miles.

There are 2 main reasons why I'd want to program destinations that are so far away, even if I do not plan to immediate drive there. First, I like to plan my route and compare GPS recommendations from different sources (e.g., Waze, Apple Maps, Google Maps). There have been rare instances in which I receive very different recommendations for routes and estimated drive times across different GPS providers. Second, I like to pre-program my destinations into Waze so that when it comes time to drive, they are in my recently used items list. On rare occasions, in the absence of an internet connection, I am unable to program my destination because Waze cannot look up the coordinates--this is when it is very helpful to have my destination saved ahead of time.

I should note that even though Waze was unable to provide me with turn-by-turn route guidance, it did in fact save my selected destination under my recently used items, so I assume that when I am within 1,000 miles of my destination, I can simply tap and go.