Driving & Getting Lost

[Section_Eight]

On the whole I’m a good driver and if I’m traveling along a well-used route (well-used by me) I’m fine. Where I come unstuck is if I take a side street that has a twist or turn in it, I usually lose track of where I am compared to where I’ve just been. Even when I try to guess which way I need to turn to get back on track, I make the wrong choice about 95% of the time. Which is odd you’d thing I’d be wrong about 50% of the time, but it’s at the point where I’m starting to choose the opposite to the direction I think I should take.

My wife who has an excellent sense of direction (and always knows where north is) can’t understand how I become lost so easily. I should also mention I live in Christchurch NZ and it’s very flat, so there are often no visual reference points to help me locate where I am.



I tried to explain to her that for some reason my brain can’t hold on to a visual map of the streets and that I get lost. Also if I haven’t travelled a certain way for a few months I can struggle to remember the route, even if I’ve previously used to travel the route on a common basis. I tend to draw a blank, and then I have to imagine leaving my house and driving, to try and connect the bits I do remember to hopefully form a complete path.

My wife tries to give me directions and over the years she’s gotten better at using language and reference points I understand, but she still sometimes will use a reference point and give me a direction, while missing out some of the details that were obvious to her. Often her directions aren’t very clear to me and I get lost.

An example of this is I had just dropped my daughter off at her friend’s house and my son wanted to be picked up from his friend’s house. Despite having been to my sons friend’s house before I couldn’t picture how to get from where I was to where I need to go. I also couldn’t remember the name of the street I had to take. It began with M but there are two parallel streets in a row that begin with M and I get mixed up as to which one to take.

So I rung my wife and asked her, I’m traveling along X street and need to get to Y. she gave me directions. After I got lost and rung her in a grump she tried to explain where I needed to go to correct myself. At this point she did say something along the lines of “oh I thought it was obvious you had to turn down z street so I didn’t mention it”. In the end I took the long way to the streets I know and choose the wrong M street. I then back-tracked and finally picked up my son. All the while getting text messages from him “where are you?”, “will you be long?”

I’m perfectly fine with all other aspects of driving and when I have a map I never get lost and can easily read them. But verbally getting directions (when I don’t have any visual reference points) I get confused, lost, stressed and angry. What’s weird is I recently visited a town (Dunedin) in NZ I’ve never been too, and I had no problems getting around or getting lost because there were visual reference points I could use. I never knew I had a problem as the city I learned to drive in has plenty of hills and other reference points.

Does anyone else have this problem?

 

[Keigan]

I have excellent sense of direction and I still carry a smart phone and a compass and a map.

 

[Mia]

I'm terrible and often can't find my car in a parking lot. I'll take the wrong door out and go in the opposite direction. I need reference points, or some sort of structure to navigate from on city streets. My husband is much better at this than I am, he grew up in a city. Drop me in a forest, I'll navigate my way out relatively quickly.

We solved the problem by buying a GPS.

 

[Maiki]

Does anyone else have this problem?

Argh! I sure do! I try to rely on my "gut" and end up doing more U-turns than would seem statistically probable. I'm an attentive, safe driver and pretty confident in most driving situations. I just fall apart on the the navigation. If I need to drive someplace new, I typically need to look the route on a map (phone or computer). Then, if it's not straightforward, I need to write out directions for myself-- both going AND coming, with "turn right, exit left", etc.
My husband has a fantastic sense of direction. He loses patience with me all the time. Can't conceive of my not knowing whether "it's west or north".

 

[Manuheleku]

I grew up in the days of analog maps so I used to memorize a route before leaving home. With the advent of Google maps, I am now lazy and let Google deal with it until Google makes a mistake. Then I figure out what I need to do to get where I want by looking at the screen map. So, no, I guess I'm fortunate in that regards.

 

[Chance]

The greatest miracle of my time... On star and nav... until it glitches and I am as lost as a duck in a hail storm.

Put me on foot in a unknown forrest I can find my way... In a car, in a strange place not so much...
I think so much is going on that the processing gets jumbled up and I get confused. If I just stop and think it out, I'm good usually... Unless there are loud mouths in the car screaming at me to turn here without giving me any warning whatsoever... I dislike this bad enough I will pull the car over and ask them drive.

 

[buckyboy14]

Yeah, it's caused by Nonverbal Learning Disability. I have no sense of direction and my mom can't understand it. She thinks if I just study maps that I'll eventually figure out the way to go. It doesn't work like that, though. I need a GPS, but she says that I can't rely on that. I don't have a choice, though.

 

[Full Steam]

If I were an xman, this would be my mutant power.

Once drive to Middlesbrough and missed the town all together.

Wait a minute, that looks like Newcastle!

 

[wight]

Yes, it is easy for me to get "lost" in the car. Particularly in housing developments or downtown areas where there are a lot of turns. These days, I just let Google Maps deal with it. So much less stress than analog maps, a compass, memorizing directions and street names, etc.

Like @Chance, I don't seem to have this problem when afoot.

 

[Eruva]

I resort to using my GPS everywhere I go these days. I know this doesn't help improve my sense of direction, but it gets me places. For me to have a good sense of where I'm going, I really have to have a visual map in my head before I set out, and I have to be the one driving. If I'm a passenger or if I'm taking directions along the way, I probably won't internalize the route. My husband, however, has an amazing ability to "use the force" wherever he goes.

 

[Jimbo]

If I look on a map it tends to stick pretty well in my brain where I need to go. I couldn't survive a day without a GPS though in my carpet cleaning business. The sad part is many times I have to use my GPS to get back out of a subdivision unless I am really familiar with it.

 

[Maiki]

I resort to using my GPS everywhere I go these days. I know this doesn't help improve my sense of direction, but it gets me places. For me to have a good sense of where I'm going, I really have to have a visual map in my head before I set out, and I have to be the one driving. If I'm a passenger or if I'm taking directions along the way, I probably won't internalize the route. My husband, however, has an amazing ability to "use the force" wherever he goes.

Hi Eruva! I could say exactly the same thing. I'm like you, and my husband has some sort of compass in his brain. He can drive us around in foreign cities, and somehow find our destination 'by feel'.

 

[Full Steam]

The compass in the brain thing is right.

Scientists have known for years that some birds can follow magnetic lines of force from the planet. There is a theory that a small organ contains quantum entangled widgets that allow this.

I think last year it was discovered that some humans have that too.

If I do have it mine is entangled with a brain on a different planet all together.

I'm trying to navigate Brisbane but my brains navi computer thinks I'm driving through a gas cloud on Jupiter.

 

[Desiree W]

Speaking of driving and getting lost, I did today. I don't drive this car often, so I don't know where the navigation system is located with it being a newer model than I'm used to. I tried following my mother's directions, but somehow ended up taking a wrong turn. As a result, I got lost. I hate this!!!!
I've had issues for many years now. However, in the other cars when I used my Garmin gps, I was fine. I can get to a place, but going back home, I get turned around somehow. I read that getting lost easily is a trait or symptom of ASD.

 

[pjcnet]

Most people are kind of "lazy" these days by using a GPS and they've grown to totally rely on them, in fact many modern drivers wouldn't have a clue how to navigate without one. You'd think this would make the subject of this thread irrelevant or at least outdated as no-one would ever get lost or need to rely on their natural navigational abilities any more, but the age of GPS has in fact introduced other problems. If the GPS information is wrong most people never seem to learn and still follow it repeatedly, I've known numerous examples of the GPS being inaccurate and/or wrong. The worst example for myself is when I put my home address into any GPS or online map as it places the destination about 300 meters away along a side road that is for pedestrians only while the GPS wrongfully treats it as normal road, this is infuriating as virtually every courier who tries to deliver to my address ends up lost and simply can't find my correct address or often even my road which would be easily found without the GPS, instead they're usually stuck at the other side of the pedestrian only street (which isn't even my road in the first place) wandering why it's blocked off and we've had loads of missed deliveries because of this b**l***t. Even Uber and other taxis keep turning up to the wrong location as they totally trust the incorrect information on their GPS and never even seem to contemplate that it could ever be wrong or even that they could easily divert around the pedestrian street as the GPS doesn't show them how to. I don't know any easy way to get a national GPS system corrected in the UK to resolve my local issue at least, but if anyone has any suggestions please feel free and I'd be grateful.

Unfortunately I'm not medically fit to drive any more, but I used to drive almost every day for almost 20 years and I only used a GPS that my friend owned on a few occasions in my final months. I was perfectly fine with regular routes that were so well memorised in my head that I could drive them subconsciously, on many occasions I could be talking to a passenger or thinking about something else and then I'd suddenly realise that I was almost at the destination without remembering actually driving there (I drove perfectly safely however). If I took a route I didn't know or took side roads I could get lost for a short time, but before long I'd see a road sign which would put me back in the right direction and even while lost I don't think my sense of direction was any different to an average NT. If I drove a new route I would plan using a map first and I didn't have too much trouble, but if someone was directing me I would never seem to learn even short simple routes even after driving them multiple times, the same was true with the GPS, it could direct me along a route and even if I'd driven it multiple times I'd still be relying on the GPS, where if I'd been made to navigate the route without "help" I'd learn it very quickly. If this is the same for other people including NTs then this is another example of why a GPS isn't always a good thing, people rely on them far too much these days, they're unlikely to ever learn how to truly navigate or remember routes themselves and as I've mentioned earlier they will follow incorrect information without question. If anyone wanted to cause complete chaos to any modern country today all they'd need to do is take down GPS navigation or worse corrupt the system so it gave everyone totally incorrect information, it would be a great prerequisite to an invasion. Before GPS most people didn't have any issues navigating themselves, so why do so many people totally rely it so much today?

The strange thing about driving is I could go places that were unfamiliar to me without feeling too stressed or anxious, yet this isn't the case normally. I think it was because my car itself was familiar and I always knew it could take me back to somewhere familiar easily in safety (I felt in total control). It's a different matter if I'm forced to travel somewhere unfamiliar either as a passenger or by using public transport. It's a shame it's very unlikely that I will ever be fit to drive ever again with sleep apnea (a CPAP machine doesn't work well with me) and now other medical issues, in all my years of driving I never had a single accident and I was proud when people with autism are supposed to have impaired motor skills (that's one trait I didn't seem to inherit, perhaps it was because I was so much into computers including computer games where many seemed to use similar reactive skills?).

PS: When I learnt a route I never had a visualised map in my head however and I similarly find it very hard to visualise anything, instead I'd just automatically learn to follow routes from memory and I'm not even certain how I did it. When I planned an unfamiliar route using a map I'd remember which towns / cities I had to head for along with rough distances and when I had to change roads / what junctions I had to come off motorways Etc, again there was no visualisation involved. Occasionally when I got close to an unfamiliar destination I'd have to stop and refer to the map again to navigate smaller roads, but I'd just pinpoint where I was and then remember left / right directions Etc. until I reached the road required, once again with no visualisation needed, on many occasions I'd even have this planned out beforehand.

I'm terrible and often can't find my car in a parking lot. I'll take the wrong door out and go in the opposite direction. I need reference points, or some sort of structure to navigate from on city streets. My husband is much better at this than I am, he grew up in a city. Drop me in a forest, I'll navigate my way out relatively quickly.

We solved the problem by buying a GPS.

It's strange as even though I didn't have many issues navigating while driving I commonly lost my car in parking lots too and once I even very embarrassingly reported my car stolen when it was later found parked on a similar looking parallel street lol! (but it wasn't funny at the time, I felt awful for wasting police time and a total idiot, luckily the police were understanding).