Who would have imagined that increased use of automated navigational information could have a down side, with more widespread use of automated mapping serving to push individual drivers into a nominally less busy route that turns out to be anything but if everyone else is getting similar advice about how to avoid a traffic snarl-up ahead?
To be fair, the research on this is at an early stage, but it seems plausible that unless the different mapping and navigation systems start to work together drivers are going to lose the advantage they’ve had in the early days when most drivers relied upon their local knowledge to find shortcuts and only a few journeys were made with the benefit of real-time mapping and navigational systems.