School bus driver GPS

[cadillackid]

Originally Posted by Crown_Guy

How did we (me included) ever survive without all the electronic crutches today, and auto transmissions, and... well you get my drift. Get a paper map and a printout from the district of the route map. They have one for sure. They still pass those out to the driver, or at least they should. Make them if not. Then make the effort and learn the route. Doesn't take but a few days to learn. The first days are always rough and they all know it.

By the way, you may not know it yet but, you're carrying a load of professional back seat drivers who know the route better than you and they will most definitely let you know if you make any kind of mistake or miss a turn, trust me. The kids are a great resource, ask them until you get it all sorted out for yourself. It also helps lower barriers so they don't see you as a target for abuse and sport. Just a working driver doing the best you can and something they can look forward to as they get older, role model and one of them only older is all.

as a kid there was always a couple of us "bus geeks" that sat in the front seats behind the driver and behind the front door... whenever there was a sub driver we were always sure to let them know where the stops were and who was and wasnt going to be late for the bus


yes im 100% a techie geek and like to have lots of screens in front of me on my more modern RedByrd to help with engine controls and navigation... even on my vintage bus i carry portable GPS screens to navigate.. **BUT** behind me on the seat is a rand mcnally "motor carrier" atlas.. the latest version in the biggest laminated format i can get..



I use it fairly often to get a good visual of roads going in a general direction.. the size of the lines help me to keep on the roads suitable for a bus trip.. I can easily pick out the state routes which I know will have notification of low bridges and weight restrictions.. the pages on that atlas also note trouble spots for trucks.. its nice to be able to use eraseable markers on the laminated pages and carve out a route.. I find it fun to do..


I like to cruise away fron the interstate when im in the busses... i like going through towns.. esp in the spring and summer where I can park and go walking around..

[Albatross]

I definitely have a preference for paper maps, but I grew up on them as a kid pretending to be off on adventures or hunting pirate treasure. I even got a job one time delivering sandwiches, and the hiring manager told me that I needed google maps, and I laughed at him and told him I don't use google, but I have "Key maps", and the store itself had a giant map of their delivery area on the wall. The manager was kind of young, one of those kids that's never known a time before high-speed internet, and he was kind of baffled how I was one of their fastest and most dependable drivers, that wouldn't be stopped or slowed down no matter what was happening in the city, but I guess he just didn't understand that streets were actually laid out in an orderly fashion, and that there was actually some logic behind how addresses work (evens on one side of the road and odds on the other, and that the blocks all have a certain "set" of addresses). It also helped that I had a pickup that sat high enough I could jump some curbs if I needed to.


Since you're actually driving for a school, I would definitely trust your kids a bit to help you out. Eventually it will all be old-hat, and you'll know the routes.

[BlueBoy]

Originally Posted by Albatross

He's saying that the liberal mindset likes to cripple, limit, and otherwise disable people from doing things "for their own good" (and/or the good of society), which is essentially a prohibition-mindset. People who have more trust in other people, and the legal system are more inclined to tolerate the "dangerous freedom" that America was founded upon.

Nailed it!

Originally Posted by Crown_Guy

How did we (me included) ever survive without all the electronic crutches today, and auto transmissions, and... well you get my drift. Get a paper map and a printout from the district of the route map. They have one for sure. They still pass those out to the driver, or at least they should. Make them if not. Then make the effort and learn the route. Doesn't take but a few days to learn. The first days are always rough and they all know it.

By the way, you may not know it yet but, you're carrying a load of professional back seat drivers who know the route better than you and they will most definitely let you know if you make any kind of mistake or miss a turn, trust me. The kids are a great resource, ask them until you get it all sorted out for yourself. It also helps lower barriers so they don't see you as a target for abuse and sport. Just a working driver doing the best you can and something they can look forward to as they get older, role model and one of them only older is all.

They don’t give you a map of anything but a list of step-by-step turns and instructions. I tried to print out google maps but it’s hard to get any detail on one piece of paper. I like the real thing in front of me (no power source).
But the GPS thing is to help me out until the rout becomes “old-hat”(Albatross). I want turn by turn audible directions (to keep my eyes on the road) also when a drop off is coming up. Picking them up is easy because they’re already standing out there.

That’s what Tom said, a veteran school bus driver. He’s teaching me the route I’m on. I’ll have him for next week then I’m on my own. But he said to ask some of the kids to help out with the route. Ya, just one of them but “slightly” older and the one driving the bus.

[BlueBoy]

Well folks, this is it. The Garmin DriveSmart 65 is what I was looking for.
Works pretty good. You can have all kinds of routs with however many stops you need. I guess until the memory gets full. But there’s a slot for an SD card. You can set it up to whatever works best for you. Actually I had to turn off the woman, she was getting annoying. From what I can see there was only two choices, her voice or another woman’s annoying voice. Doesn’t really matter anyway, just about got all the stops memorized.

I’m no Neo-Luddite but technology is rotting our brains. I’d rather be back in the days before cell phones and all these nifty gadgets. People use their brains instead of their fingertips. YMMV

[Iceni John]

Originally Posted by BlueBoy

Actually I had to turn off the woman, she was getting annoying. From what I can see there was only two choices, her voice or another woman’s annoying voice. Doesn’t really matter anyway, just about got all the stops memorized.

If I ever buy some nav system I want one with a good choice of voices. I think having a gruff German voice shouting "You vill turn here schnell, Ja?", or a sultry Italian floozie's voice tempting me with breathy requests to "Turn that bigg-a wheel of yours and make-a me happy by going-a left here" would be a lot more fun than some godawful computer-generated robovoice like what we're hearing everywhere these days. Maybe a Stephen Hawking-esque 1980s synthesised voice could be good, or an AI-rendition of the late Queen Elizabeth II imperiously ordering plebeian commoners like me to move out of her regal way, but said so nicely as she was wont to do.

In the meantime I'll stick to real maps and hand-written directions.

John

[nikitis]

I'm kind of amazed that there are still people who use real maps. I'm old enough to use real maps myself and even traveled across the country when I was 17 before GPS was available to consumers, but once that Puck GPS came out that mounts to the roof of your car, and USB-A to a laptop came out with Garmin software, I never looked back. Got me home across the USA faster too than the choices I picked.

I'm not saying a good paper map will fail you, but it doesn't account for traffic, construction areas, speed traps, all the stuff you can get today from a modern GPS.

I can appreciate if you enjoy the adventure and the unknown though, but I dropped paper maps years ago, and I started on them.

What is it that you paper enjoyers don't like about modern GPS?

[Jolly Roger bus 223]

really?
not saying they dont help?
but i am of the era of rand mcnally.
more of the era of a military forward observer directing mortars artillery and combined air support on to targets. no gps back then paper map a few minutes to orient it and make your marks.
nothing like calling in 7 A 10's to take out 5 tanks its more like make the call and bury yourself in the sand.
i can take a paper mamp and go anywhere.
my wife is a traveling lab tech right now but she always brings me a rand/mcnally map from wherever she has been.
google map stuff in my area has a few problems for me like one way streets and hauling equipment oversize load stuff and even a loaded trailer with 8' wide units with people parking on the roads a heavy equipment trailer gets tight quick on a 2 lane with cars parked.
gps aint always it"?
mine i phone drops out when i get into a town. my work phone android stays lost when i get into a town?
paper maps are always there.
of course you might need the updated version.
field marine grid coordinates whats available? mortars? artillery? air support?
all bomb or troop support from a paper map and a radio.
combined air support from the fly boys is always grateful.
a protractor and a plotting board with a paper map of the area helps alot.
my wife and i had a garmin to do whatever the go find me thing was but the battery didnt last on an 8 hour trip but that was unplugged being military i want stuff that works without electricity.
i aint a prepprer but i know my roots. what the hell was technology?
i had an atarie with frogger on a cassette tape.
frogger was on the computer and it was a line trying to jump a bunch of lines or you droiwned.
guess they were supposednto be logs.

[Albatross]

Originally Posted by nikitis

What is it that you paper enjoyers don't like about modern GPS?

I don't have a GPS system, so I'm stuck with goggle maps. Which is nice a lot of the time, but often sucks, and has sent me on some wild goose-chases before. And Goggle themselves have admitted to conducting experiments on people before.



Personally, if I had a better GPS system that was tied into the bus, it might not be too bad, but I also trend towards the paranoid when it comes to surveillance; having done that kind of thing in the military before on other people. It's ramped up a bit since the government has made it clear that they're considering "returning vets" as "terror threats", and the kind of stuff I did means that I will likely never, ever get off of their "lists". So paper maps allow me to have whatever degree of privacy I feel necessary at the time, since they don't emit any radio frequencies.



But even moreso, when I'm taking the bus out, I'm generally going on an adventure, and paper maps allow me to see in my head where I'm going, and what's around there, and especially since we're generally cruising at a slower speed than most others, it allows me to take the backroads, and see more of the area than you'd generally get from the freeway. Maps also generally will allow you to see the terrain better than most of the GPS stuff I've used, especially once you get used to seeing how the terrain lies based on the way the streets are laid out. This allows me to plan to see more of the sights, like climbing to the top of a mountain or hill that allows you to see the rest of the area better while enjoying a beverage. And it also makes the journey something a bit more special than simply rushing to get to a specific location, just to sit back and luxuriate like I'm at home... Doing things this way allows me to chill out, and realize that the journey there is as much part of the relaxation as anything else. And taking backroads also generally skips over most of the traffic, too--although trains can still jam you up for a bit, though I'm the kind of guy that doesn't feel guilty about putting it in park and walking back to grab a coke or something while waiting on a train.



I like GPS-assisted drives just fine when I have someplace to be, but when I'm on vacation, I'll generally trade it out for a map.