By Mike Johnson
I hate driving under the thumb of Siri.
The iPhone voice navigation system has likely caused more accidents than all drunk drivers combined.
This is because her voice often does not deliver instructions with enough time to safely react.
You need a human copilot to translate and assist Siri’s directions. Even then, things go haywire.
Every week there are stories of people driving off bridges or plunging into swamps due to fixation on phone navigation.
So when I landed in Albuquerque, after dark, with no paper map, with two additional witnesses in the backseat, I was dependent on the wife and her damn iPhone.
Siri was not patient with our mistakes. She exposed her frustration with an exasperated tone. "Proceed to route" implied she wanted to add, "Jackass!"
Siri got us within 200 feet of our Airbnb, but it still took us four humans conducting an old-school search to find the front door.
Driving in heavy traffic during daylight hours was no picnic either. Last-second lane changes on freeways were especially stressful. It’s disconcerting to
become the same knucklehead driver you’re usually swearing about.
I apologize for making the drivers in Texas look bad – that was the plate on our rental. As it turns out, a helpful disguise.
It’s already difficult to drive in a strange metropolis. But enormously worse if you can’t even visualize the approximate route more than a hundred feet in advance.
I’m old enough to realize most technology has passed me by. I’m wise enough to realize it’s no big loss.
Navigation technology has its place – right in the trash can.
Paper maps always beat digital, cyborg, navigational shrews.
If I'm to die driving in Albuquerque, I want to go peacefully in my sleep. Not like my wife, holding an iPhone, in the copilot seat, screaming in terror.
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