Old car-navigation mistakes and "borrowing peace of mind in advance"
We've got smartphones. We've got Google Maps. Type in a destination and it guides you from wherever you're standing. It shows traffic. It tells you where to turn. There's Street View. You can even search for parking.
And yet some people sit down before a trip, study the map carefully, and get the route into their heads before they go.
Where to turn. Which roads to take. Which intersection needs a right turn. What the area around the destination looks like. They go through the whole route on Street View. Sometimes they've basically watched the drive like a video before they ever leave.
Honestly, if you grew up with a phone in your hand, the reaction is:
Can't you just use navigation?
These days it's one tap. Let Google Maps handle the drive. Isn't spending hours memorizing everything before you leave a waste of both time and brainpower?
I think that reaction is perfectly natural.
But if you think about it, those people aren't just being inefficient.
They're after something different.
We're looking at "how efficiently we get there." They're looking at "not panicking once we're there."
The two sound alike, but they're really different games.
The lesson learned from old car navigation systems
I think the biggest factor is what those people learned from the car navigation systems of the past.
Google Maps today is seriously good. It shows live traffic. It reroutes fast. Your current position is easy to read. Searching for a destination on your phone is simple. Nearby info pops up right away.
But the in-car navigation units of the old days weren't nearly this trustworthy.
They'd take you to the back side of your destination. They'd send you down tiny roads. They'd make you take a long detour. Rerouting was slow. They'd say "You have arrived near your destination. Guidance ends now," and that last stretch was exactly the part you couldn't figure out. Typing in an address was a pain. The map data was out of date. Again and again you'd hear "Please turn back" or "Make a U-turn."
After enough of that, people learn.
"If you trust the navigation alone, you're in trouble." "You have to look things up yourself too." "The area around the destination especially needs checking beforehand." "When the machine gives weird directions, you need to be able to correct it yourself."
So the habit of memorizing routes may not be some outdated quirk. It may be a defense mechanism born from being burned by old navigation systems.
Call it learning from the old car-navi failures.
Navigation was handy, but you couldn't fully trust it
By today's standards, navigation is an external brain.
You enter the destination. Then you just follow instructions. It tells you where to turn. If you go wrong, it reroutes. It even watches traffic for you.
So there's no need to memorize the whole route.
But back then, navigation felt like a machine that was handy but not quite trustworthy.
It did give you directions. But it also gave you strange roads. You couldn't tell where the final entrance was. You'd panic on the spot. Your passenger would ask, "Are you sure this is right?" And you had to make decisions while driving.
Once you've been through that, you want the map already loaded in your own head before you leave.
You build a backup inside yourself for when the navigation gets it wrong.
That's not about efficiency. It's about peace of mind.
The old navigation OS in your head
I think people like this still have the old car-navigation operating system running in their heads, even in the Google Maps era.
An old car-navi OS in the brain, if you will.
Here's how that old OS runs.
Look at the map before leaving. Memorize where to turn. Memorize the names of the major roads. Check the area around the destination. Learn the scenery on Street View. Check the parking lot entrance too. Get ready to correct the navigation yourself in case it says something odd.
To someone raised on smartphones, this looks like overkill.
But for the person doing it, it makes sense.
"I know the way." "I know where to turn." "I won't panic when I get there." "I can cope even if the navigation goes wrong." "I won't get lost in front of the people I'm with."
That's the sense of security they get.
So it looks like they're manually installing the entire route in the age of Google Maps, but for them it's insurance against panicking on arrival.
Borrowing peace of mind in advance
If you only judge by how efficiently you arrive, memorizing the route looks pointless.
But for the person doing it, it's borrowing peace of mind in advance.
They deal with the anxiety before departure. They look at the area around the destination first. They memorize where to turn. They check the scenery on Street View. They take the trip once in their heads.
That takes a bit of the edge off the anxiety once they're there.
On the day of the trip, there's less of:
"Is this really the right place?" "Where's the parking lot?" "Where's the entrance?" "I think the navigation is taking me somewhere weird." "There's a car right behind me and I got lost."
So they spend time on preparation to cut down on worry later.
Whether that's efficient or not is a separate question.
For someone like Aki, who thinks "can't you just let the navigation handle it?", all that prep looks like manually burning brainpower.
But for the other person, they're handling the anxiety the day before.
Getting there efficiently and not panicking once you're there are different games.
The pre-trip rehearsal as an art form
Some people memorize the whole route as a video.
At that point it's less navigation and more a kind of pre-trip rehearsal as performance art.
Check the route. Look at the scenery on Street View. Turn here. Cross this intersection. When you see this sign, turn right. When you see this building, you're close. Pull into this parking lot.
Go this far and it's like you've already taken the trip once in your head.
And some people enjoy that.
They like looking at maps. They like planning before a trip. They like previewing the scenery. Memorizing routes is fun in itself. They enjoy imagining, "So this is where I'll be passing through."
In that case it's not about efficiency, it's a hobby.
If they're having fun, that's perfectly fine.
The problem is when they're not doing it for fun but because anxiety leaves them no choice.
Then spending hours memorizing routes is a heavy load.
The Google Maps generation uses navigation as an external brain
The smartphone generation treats navigation as an external brain.
They don't memorize routes. They ask the phone where they are. They leave the turns to the voice guidance. The app watches the traffic. They'll look at the area near the destination on the spot if they need to. If they take a wrong turn, they just reroute.
With that mindset, there's no need to memorize the whole route.
If anything, trying to memorize it is a waste of brainpower.
Rather than spending a few hours before the trip on memorizing directions, it's better to spend them on what to pack, how you're feeling, which shops you want to visit, rest stops, and what you want to do when you get there.
So from the Google Maps generation's point of view, memorizing the entire route is pretty baffling.
I think this isn't just an age gap. It's a difference in where you keep your route guidance.
People from the old days keep it in their own heads. People today outsource it to their phones.
Local storage in your brain, or an external brain in the cloud.
That's the difference.
Still, relying on navigation has its downsides
That said, leaving everything to navigation isn't completely right either.
Relying too much on GPS and navigation may weaken your sense of space and your memory for routes.
Research has also shown a tendency that people with more GPS experience do worse on spatial memory and self-guided navigation when they don't have GPS.
And if you only get turn-by-turn instructions, you may stop paying attention to the surrounding terrain and landmarks. On the other hand, guidance that uses landmarks, and checking the route beforehand, may help build spatial knowledge.
So looking at the map isn't bad in itself.
The question is how far you take it.
Look over the area around the destination a little. Check the parking lot entrance. Check the last turn. Look only at the forks where it's easy to get lost.
That's quite reasonable.
But spending hours memorizing the entire drive as video looks like overkill if efficiency is the goal.
The modern sweet spot: "just look at the end"
The best answer today is probably somewhere in the middle.
It's fine to leave everything to navigation. But if it's your first time going somewhere, take a short look at the final stretch.
What's worth checking isn't the whole route.
- The area around the destination
- The parking lot entrance
- The last turn
- Places where you'd need to change lanes
- Highway exits
- The entrance to the facility
- Spots where the navigation might send you to the back side
- Mountain roads, narrow lanes, and other places where a mistake would be a real headache
That's all you need.
Spend 5 to 10 minutes checking.
That way you get the strengths of modern Google Maps and also cover the lessons from the old navigation failures.
Don't memorize the whole route. Just look at the area around the destination, the parking lot, and the last turn.
That's the best value for your effort.
Memorizing everything is fine as a hobby, but overkill for efficiency
In the end, how you judge someone who memorizes the whole route before a trip depends on their purpose.
If they love maps and enjoy the pre-trip rehearsal itself, that's absolutely fine.
That's a hobby.
But if the only goal is to avoid getting lost, memorizing everything may be too much these days.
Google Maps is very strong. It guides you in real time. It reroutes when you go wrong. You can even check Street View on the spot.
So the need to put everything in your head has dropped a lot.
Manually installing the whole route may give you peace of mind. But it costs a lot of time and brainpower.
If the prep is fun, great. If it isn't, you can cut it back.
Summary: they aren't memorizing the route, they're dealing with anxiety early
So what are people doing when they memorize the whole route before a trip in the smartphone era?
Probably not just memorizing roads.
They learned a lesson from being burned by old car navigation. They can't fully trust navigation. They don't want to panic on arrival. They don't want to get lost in front of the people they're with. They want the big picture so they can relax. They want to run the trip once in their heads beforehand.
In other words, it looks like memorizing the route, but they're actually dealing with anxiety first.
That's understandable.
Still, these days the need to memorize everything has shrunk a lot.
Manually installing the entire route in your head in the Google Maps era is pretty heavy if you only count efficiency.
The best answer today is probably this:
Don't memorize the whole drive. Just look at the area around the destination, the parking lot, and the last turn.
That's about right, I think.
Beyond that, it's either borrowing peace of mind in advance, pre-trip rehearsal as performance art, or manually burning brainpower.
If they enjoy it, it's a fine hobby.
But if they're spending hours on it just because they're anxious, it's okay to hand it over to navigation little by little.
Just by moving from the old car-navi OS in your head to the Google Maps external brain, you'll feel a lot less worn out before a trip.
