So, the afternoon/evening of November 24, 2019, I was driving, my wife was navigating, and my mom and step-dad were in the back of the rental car, driving from Turin to Genoa on the A6. Unbeknownst to us, there was a major bridge collapse on the A6 between Turin and Genoa. (Edit: I originally thought it was the August 2018 collapse in roughly the same area.)
Google Maps seemed to kind of know there was a problem, and kind of not know... it got us in a loop of getting on and off of the freeway, literally in a loop. So, I just decided there must be a problem ahead, and went a bit further along the detour it kept starting us on, and it eventually found us a proper detour. It's very strange that Google Maps routing heuristics put us on the detour when we were on the freeway, and re-routed us to the freeway as soon as we got on the detour.
We looped twice while I was weighing the relative merits of forcing Google Maps to bring us further down the freeway vs. forcing Google Maps to bring us further down the detour, and exactly the best way to accomplish that.
On a side note, don't drive in Italy, particularly with a navigator with aphantasia who isn't used to GPS lag, particularly in downtown Rome. We came very close to accidentally entering restricted traffic zones during restricted times, and narrowly avoided large fines, in both Rome and Florence.
I thought my wife's aphantasia is related to her difficulty in orienting a map and figuring out where she is on the map. If GPS is off by half a block and/or the magnetic compass has the map mis-oriented by more than 45 degrees, then it's very difficult for her to compensate. Certainly, when I navigate by map, imagining the street scene overlaid when looking at the map and imagining the map overlaid when looking at the street scene are huge aids to navigation. She's not able to generate that augmented reality in her imagination, and I attributed that lack of mental augmented reality to her difficulty in using maps.
Generally, I'd prefer to navigate and let my wife drive, but she's used to driving in countries where they drive on the left, and I'm used to driving in countries where they drive on the right. Also, if a manual transmission is significantly cheaper to rent, then I end up driving, regardless of which side of the road the locals drive. More than once, I've down-shifted while turning on my wipers instead of my turn signal while entering a roundabout. At least car manufacturers don't flip the shift pattern right-to-left when changing which side the steering wheel is on.
Just for my own personal interest, did you already know the two words aphantasia and amnesia? If so, would you mind rank-ordering the following three possibilities in your mind when you posted the comment:
- GP comment mixed up the two words
- GP comment intended aphantasia in a way that makes sense but you do not yet know how
- GP comment intended aphantasia but that does not make sense
I knew the words. I did not expect it to have been a mixup as amnesia is a much more commonly used term. I posted the comment because I am aphantastic as well but have no difficulty navigating, in fact I am typically delegated to for the task (across urban, cross-country, and backcountry environments).
Google Maps seemed to kind of know there was a problem, and kind of not know... it got us in a loop of getting on and off of the freeway, literally in a loop. So, I just decided there must be a problem ahead, and went a bit further along the detour it kept starting us on, and it eventually found us a proper detour. It's very strange that Google Maps routing heuristics put us on the detour when we were on the freeway, and re-routed us to the freeway as soon as we got on the detour.
We looped twice while I was weighing the relative merits of forcing Google Maps to bring us further down the freeway vs. forcing Google Maps to bring us further down the detour, and exactly the best way to accomplish that.
On a side note, don't drive in Italy, particularly with a navigator with aphantasia who isn't used to GPS lag, particularly in downtown Rome. We came very close to accidentally entering restricted traffic zones during restricted times, and narrowly avoided large fines, in both Rome and Florence.