The same as intown, I used to know all the shortcuts but they are now as congested as the main roads, so I stay on the main roads now, as fighting your way around parked cars and trying to make sure the parent drop off cars do not hit you has become a nightmare in my area

as you say sat nav has given everyone all the shortcuts that are now disappearing quickly

as they cannot build more roads all they should imo do is stop parents dropping off their children and let them walk....

Think laterally, i have reasonable success in dodging motorway closure jams, what you must do unless you have a good knowledge of the roads and typical traffic densities is take a few moments to look at the closure section on a proper road atlas, the satnav is too small for this.

The alternative the sat nav will be showing to the unthinking will be staring you in the face, the thing then is to find your lateral route the unthinkng hordes won't work out for themselves, but most important is any junctions (roundabouts especially) where you meet or cross satnavs reroute is one where you will have priority.

Google maps when you click ''traffic'' is quite good i find.

Generally satnav does not feature in my day to day work because i've been on the road so many years i usually know where i'm am, so i have my company issue Garmin jobbie on ''digi traffic'' setting permanently, in which mode i can scan the entire country in seconds so as to choose the most likely traffic free route before starting the journey, if you use normal satnav it only warns of problems on the road you are on and you must be watching all routes in case a reroute ends up in the road with you.

Times have changed the country and its roads are now at breaking point and it's only going to get worse as the country receives hundreds of thousands more every single year, so we have to adapt and think outside the box to not be one of the millions of lemmings following the electronic pied piper to oblivion.