EVERYDAY DRIVERS

Most driving is repetition. The same roads, the same junctions, the same three or four destinations, week after week. The satnav sits in its cradle and rarely says anything you did not already know. Then comes the appointment in a town you have never visited, or a diversion on a route you thought you knew by heart, and suddenly the device is the only thing telling you where to go.

That is the moment everyday navigation is decided, and it is decided badly more often than it should be. Not because the driver lacks skill, but because a journey that was never looked at beforehand offers nothing to fall back on. If the only plan is the next spoken instruction, then a missed turning, a closed road or a lost signal leaves nothing at all.

None of this calls for maps spread across the passenger seat. It calls for about two minutes before the engine starts, and a habit of listening to the device rather than obeying it.

Know the shape of the journey before you go. Not every turning, just the outline: the main roads it uses, the direction of travel, roughly how far and how long. A driver who knows the route runs north on the A-road for twenty minutes will notice immediately when the screen sends them east into a housing estate. A driver who knows nothing but the next instruction will not notice at all.

Trust what you can see over what you are told. Satnav data can be out of date, a postcode can sit some distance from the building it belongs to, and a position fix can wander among tall buildings. When an instruction contradicts a road sign, a road marking or a closure, the road wins. Carry on safely and let the device work out a new route; it will, within seconds, and nothing is lost.

Treat a faster route as a suggestion. Live traffic is genuinely useful, but it answers one question only: which way is quickest right now. It does not know that the saving of four minutes involves an unfamiliar junction in heavy rain with children in the back. Weigh it up. Declining a reroute is a decision, not a mistake.

Check the address rather than only the postcode, and look at the destination on a map so you know whether you are arriving at a house, a car park or an industrial estate with four entrances. Note the last mile in particular, because that is where addresses are hardest to find and where most of the frustration happens. Then set off knowing you could finish the journey even if the screen went blank.

The free checklist below sets this out as six short checks you can work through in a couple of minutes.