‘Drives me mad’: This Google Maps feature is sending me crazy

Driving while listening to instructions on Google Maps is enough to spend me spare.

I was driving in an unfamiliar area the other day, in my part-time job as my daughter’s chauffeur, and I was using Google Maps to help me get to the destination.

My daughter couldn’t help me because she had her AirPods in and, as any parent of a teenager will tell you, this renders them completely incommunicado.

Anyway, I was driving along, listening to the instructions, things were going quite well … “In 600m, turn right”, “In 200m keep left at the fork”, “At the roundabout, take the second exit”, and then it said, “Head north.”

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Head north? I’m sorry, but as it turns out I do not know where north is, because I am not a seafarer navigating my way to the New World by the stars. Nor am I Vasco da Gama setting out from Portugal with my gold compass in my breeches.

No, I am just a suburban mother trying to get her 15-year-old daughter and her friends to Yo-Chi, where they live part-time.

Google Maps Navigation.

Now, I don’t know about you, but this particular feature of Google Maps drives me mad. As if it is not stressful enough when it announces “Turn left” just after you have passed the street you were meant to be turning left into, it then pushes us over the edge with a “Head southeast.”

Certainly, I’ll just pull off this highway, locate the Southern Cross and the two pointer stars beneath it, then draw an imaginary line from the diagonal of the box section, and extend that across the sky. Then I’ll bisect the two pointer stars, draw another imaginary line at a right angle from that point to where it intersects with my other line, then another imaginary line from that point down to the horizon, and Bob’s your uncle, that is south. What could be easier?

I’ll tell you what could be easier – please stop pretending most of us haven’t given up even the pretence of being self-sufficient, and very, very few of us know how to do anything any more without some sort of technology.

I was at my friend Jeff’s house the other day, we were going for a walk together, it looked like it might rain, so he said, “Hey Alexa, what’s the weather like outside?” AND HE WAS STANDING RIGHT NEXT TO A WINDOW.

Frances Whiting. Picture: Tara Croser.

We can barely get off our couches to turn the television off anymore. If we don’t want to cook, we don’t have to. We can not only get takeaway, we can get any one of several delivery services to bring it to our door.

If we want to put on some music, we can just ask Siri or Alexa or whoever else is eavesdropping on us in our own houses to play it.

So given the sort of world we now live in, who actually thought any one of us would be capable of quickly and effortlessly finding due north?

And yes, I know, some cars have a visible compass feature on their dashboard, but mine does not, or if it does, Siri hasn’t told me yet how to find it.

Anyway, let me know if you have any handy tips on how to find my direction. In life, as well as in the car, come to think of it.