Cabbie v sat nav
Posted by Bill Thomas at 3:00PM on Wednesday 23 July, 2008 1 Comment
I created a competition during the week between Len Fox and my Mercedes-Benz C220 CDI Lifer's COMAND satnav system.
You'll see Len starring this Saturday night on BBC4 in a show called 'Cab Driver' - I shouldn't give too much away about it, but it's worth a look if you want a fascinating insight into the world of the London cabbie.
London cabbies have always been a breed I admire - for their Knowledge (with a capital 'K', it being the incredibly complex navigation tests they have to pass to qualify) and their patience. Most of them are like saints - dealing with London traffic every day calls for near-inhuman patience and a great deal of skill. These are probably the best city drivers in the world. Actually, not probably, 'are'. They are the best. In a cabbie world war for great driving, the London army would win.
Anyway, I asked Len to drive my Merc right across the middle of London and evaluate my satnav and its performance as he went. We started off at Hanover Square, went through Soho, Old Street and over to the East End. The Soho bit really summed up the difference between a cabbie in rat-run mode and a pre-programmed computer system, which has the 'width' or 'speed' of roads pre-set and sends you along them.
'You wouldn't want to do that,' said Len almost immediately. 'That'll take you up to a set of lights and it'll be jammed up there for sure.' As we trundled across the road to link with the one on the other side, we looked up the road the nav would have sent us on, and sure enough, blocked.
Then we went right into the 'dirty dozen', the cabbies' name for the nasty little network of narrow one-way and blocked off streets between Oxford Street and Shaftesbury avenue in Soho. He threaded the Merc through there beautifully as the nav system determinedly advised him to go the wrong way. It was only when we were mostly through that the nav got us back on the right track again. By then, Len reckoned we'd saved about 20 minutes.
Len drove beautifully, of course - incredibly aware of the traffic around him and making very good progress without ever upsetting other drivers. He liked the Merc very much, mostly because nothing about it annoyed him. Other than the quite low position in the car (cabs sit him up higher for a better view) and the width of the A-pillar, which he said should be slimmer.
My advice to Mercedes - or any manufacturer of satnav units - would be to talk to London cabbies about the Knowledge and how to get that onto a machine. Len reckons maybe one day a nav system might make him redundant, but I disagree - there'll always be room for human ingenuity and guile.
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I think it was fairly obvious in the first place that local knowledge is a lot better than satnav. Satnavs are only used when you're going somewhere you don't know, so you wouldn't use it around where you live because you know the best and quickest way in real life, not on a nav.