Who do you think you're training?
For years I've told anyone who would listen: relying on GPS kills route-learning and real road awareness. Especially for aspiring cops — turn it off, learn the streets, become a sharper patrol driver. Solid advice, right?
Then, a few months ago, I rode shotgun with a brand-new full-license holder — only three months unrestricted — who was gunning for policing.
I expected rookie nerves. What I got was eye-opening.
We pull out of the lot. Cautious, fine. I say, "Turn left, north, onto Johnson Street." He drives right past the giant Johnson Street sign hanging next to the traffic light. Stops at the red, still scanning like the sign is invisible. I point it out. He has no clue where to even look for street names.
Next: "What's the speed limit here?" Crickets. We pass three posted signs. He misses every one. I point again.
Then I ask him to get turned around and head back. He signals early for a right turn — onto a street clearly marked NO RIGHT TURN. Confused look. "Can we turn here?" No. We continue, he finds another street and then attempts a three-point turn — but heads straight into oncoming traffic because he missed the ONE-WAY signs. No speed reduction, no hesitation — because the GPS usually tells him everything.
Fifteen minutes. That's all it took to see the pattern.
His confession? He turns on Google Maps every single drive — even the daily commute to work.
GPS didn't just help him get places. It prevented him from ever learning how to drive without it. He doesn't scan for signs, doesn't read the road environment, doesn't build the mental map every experienced driver has.
I've trained drivers from 15 to 83, and spent decades teaching advanced skills to law enforcement. This wasn't nerves. This was skill atrophy from over-reliance on tech.
What a Skilled Driver Sees That a GPS Driver Doesn't
This is where I want to go a little deeper than I did on LinkedIn, because I think it matters for how we train.
An experienced driver is constantly reading the environment for information that has nothing to do with a screen. Are the "No Parking" signs angled in a way that only makes sense for one direction of travel? Is there a stop sign missing where you'd expect one at a two-way intersection? Which way are the parked cars facing? Even the lines on the road — the colour of the paint, solid versus broken — tell you something about what kind of road you're on: one-way or two-way, what's likely to come at you, where the risk is going to come from.
A driver who has never had to build that skill because a voice in the dash has always told them where to go simply doesn't develop it. It's not laziness. It's that the skill was never demanded of them in the first place.
I went looking for some numbers after hearing that an elderly driver was killed last night, going the wrong way on a major highway. In the Greater Toronto Area alone, there have been somewhere between six and eight wrong-way crashes reported in the news just this year. A while back, GPS systems were sending drivers the wrong way down a one-way street in Toronto for days before it got corrected. And just last night, in an unrelated story, a stolen truck was found driven down a boat ramp into one of the Great Lakes.
None of these are the same failure. But they all point at the same underlying issue: when the tool does the reading of the road for us, we stop reading it ourselves — and when the tool is wrong, or absent, or the driver panics and stops trusting their own eyes, there's nothing underneath to catch it.
Most of you - if not all, reading this developed your driving skills long before GPS took over. That may make this story hard to fully fathom — you were never given the chance to lose a skill you'd already built.
So — who do you think you're training? Not the driver you learned to be. The one who's never had to build the mental map himself, because the screen has always built it for him/her.
What This Means for Training
If we accept that GPS reliance is quietly hollowing out basic road-reading skills in the drivers coming through our doors, that changes how we should be evaluating new recruits and new hires — not just whether they can operate a vehicle, but whether they can actually read a road without a screen telling them what's on it.
You can't use yourself, or the instructor beside you, as the reference point anymore. Whatever driving experience you came up through, the new officer in your car did not. Calibrate to who's actually in front of you, not who used to be.
Parents, recruiters, driving instructors: make them turn it off. At least for local trips. Force them to read signs, anticipate turns, recognize speed zones without a voice prompt. If they push back, my line is usually some version of, "Fine — get a self-driving Tesla. The rest of us would feel safer."
That advice isn't just for us. If you're in a position to say it to a parent, a recruit, or a new hire before they ever sit in your car — say it. The habit has to start long before they get to training.
Have you noticed the same thing with young or new drivers coming through your program? Or has GPS actually helped some of your students build better habits in a way I'm not giving it credit for? Let me know…
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Hugh Anderson EVOC Trainer | Author of Emergency Vehicle Operation Instruction: 5 Steps to Enhancing Your EVOC Training Grab the book on Amazon
