The Pioneer Navi

So I'd previously rented a car in Kawaguchiko, not the latest model of the Toyota Vitz. The car was a little gutless but its GPS was easy enough to use and configure to avoid toll roads. No issues there. I was able to pair my tablet with the GPS for Bluetooth multimedia.

Then in Sapporo I rented a late model 4WD Toyota Vitz. Much better car to drive than the 1st car, but it had a different GPS: the Pioneer Navi. I don't know what "Navi" could be short for, I mean it is to good navigation what Tony Abbott is to good government. But the problems start before navigation ...

The photos I've attached show the Navi screens. Note that it has been set up to use English, so the fact that there seems to be a lot of Japanese must be a trick of the light. I had to use Google Translate on some of these screens to work out WTF they meant. Route setting was particularly painful as I wanted to avoid toll roads and always had to edit the selected route to do so.

Bluetooth pairing went only so far as calls, which was useless to me. Multimedia pairing proved elusive as the Navi presented me with multiple dialog boxes to choose Yes or No, all in Japanese of course. So no Bluetooth.

And to the navigation. The 90 degree deviation driving back to Kushiro from the south east coast. The use of a service road that runs parallel to the Wakkanai freeway. The deviation onto B and C roads on the way to Kushiro. When I went to the Kushiro marshland the next day I used the Navi to navigate back to Kushiro. However when I saw signs for Nusamai Bridge (2 minutes from my hotel) I ignored the Navi's entreaties to make turns. And that went well.

What really annoyed me is how the Navi had the last laugh. On the way to Sapporo on route 274, I see a sign to turn left for Sapporo but the Navi wants me to go straight ahead. I take the left turn, get held up by roadworks, drive on, see a sign saying that there is no route to Sapporo due to the closure of a crucial mountain road, do a U-turn, get held up for even longer by the same roadworks as before and then take the Navi's requested route. Humble pie indeed.

The final contribution from the Navi came later in the day in Sapporo when it almost took me onto a (clogged) expressway. I had to edit the route on the fly and was fortunately able to bail out 170 metres down the road before the expressway entrance. Huge sigh of relief when I pulled into the Toyota rental shop.

Where A.I should take us in the future is in the ability to inflict some sort of pain on crap software. So it knows we're unhappy and tries to do a better job next time. Ah, you can dream ☹Read more