Yeah, this is a regular argument of Tom's but it's just wrong. Both Google Maps and Waze use Google Location Services, which are running by default in the background of *every* Android phone. The satnav apps do not have to be open/running to contribute to traffic data.
@@benzo8 Exactly. He hasn’t got a clue how the data is being collected. Literally millions of data points are being assimilated in real time and yet he thinks he’s better than it. Talk about overestimating your ability.
Google location services collects GPS data, however under normal use your device will not be activating the GPS listener regularly enough to make any sort of estimate about traffic. Using Google maps or any navigation app will make your phone query GPS every second, which is rich enough data for Google to determine traffic flow.
The guy in this video hasn't got a clue what he's talking about and that really annoys me., I am collecting that data whether you have to sat nav open or not. Collecting it whether you have the app installed or not makes absolutely no difference.
I’m a chauffeur and spent a lot of time in and out of london. To be honest against people like Tom I feel a fraud, their knowledge of london is outrageous. I’ve had instances where I’ve asked cabbies for help on getting around, especially when there’s issues like road works and they’ve always been top class. You are 100% right Tom, you’d bear sat nav 90% of the time and twice on Sunday. Keep up the good work, black cabs are not only driven by extremely intelligent people but also are a staple of our culture in london.
Every time I've got in a proper London cab with a green badge holder the trip has been more than the sum of it's part. History lesson, political and social commentary (even if I didn't agree with it) and general professionalism and courtesy. Particularly help for people with limited mobility was really appreciated, the new cabs are excellent accessibility wise. I wouldn't waste my time on other options unless I was looking at the tube or a bus.
@@lyricaljaffacakes2946 they are very fair when you consider the costs involved. It isn't cheap but it is good value and comparable to Uber/private hire.
Google Maps traffic data (and possibly Waze too) is also provided by mobile phone companies, who track the approximate location of every phone in real time. The anonymised data is then sold to satnav providers. This means it only needs people with phones turned on, rather than actively running a satnav app. Somewhere on TH-cam, there is a video of someone a wheelbarrow full of phones for a walk, and causing Google Maps to think there is a massive traffic jam.
Shame google maps doesn’t work properly in central London and if you followed it you would be driving illegally ie tells you to do illegal right turn onto Southwark bridge
I've learned a lot as a cabbie in Malta from your videos about saving time for everyone and getting on to the next fare. For instance today we had a road block so I can't drop directly at the front door of the hotel, but the rear door of the building was next to us. I get to move on and they are still only one door away.
I was in Brussels last week. Needed to use two public hire street taxis. Neither driver had a clue where the street I wanted to go to was. They were also confused by Google Maps and could only follow the map if the Direction option was selected. Wouldn't get that in London. Just goes to show how powerful the Knowledge is. Well done you guys.
You mentioned loading wheelchairs in the video. Just how accessible is a modern London Cab? Grew up in London, but joined the RAF and moved away in the 80's. I now have a relatively large, well tall, power wheelchair. It's about 1.4m to the top of the headrest. I've tried it with Taxies locally, which are the sort built on the like of the little Transit van. The access ramps always end up being much steeper than one is supposed to use with the chair. It makes loading a real hassle. What also doesn't help is that with the weight of both me and the chair it's getting close to the SWL of a lot of access ramps. Adding in the steepness of the ramp and it's a bit scary. So mostly I tend to limit myself to using buses. Which is a whole other issue living in the depths off the Norfolk Broads these days.
My wife has a largeish power chair and we didn't have any problems loading it into a black cab. The drivers were really helpful and, despite my expectations, didn't quibble in the slightest.
The new Black Cabs were no problem for us with an electric wheelchair and crutch user. The drivers were also more than happy to accommodate us, in fact it seemed like a welcome diversion for them.
Fun to watch this was, especially since I previously saw Tom's Collab with @tomscottplus where they raced around London, Tom could only use the knowledge and Tom Scott could only use sat nav. 👍🏻😎
I would love to see a side by side comparison of you using the Knowledge while someone uses a sat nav for the same route at the same time. Similarly I’d like to see how this differs when you use taxi-only turns/lanes etc vs not.
When i was driving cabs, I didn't need to use a "GPS" when I was driving in the city centre. You learn the best spots and tricks just through repetition.
i once had a passenger at Marble Arch and he asked me to find his car he had nothing else to tell me no idea where his car was at all it took me over an hour but i finally located the car about 20 miles outside London, it took about 5 or 6 Police stations and a number of Police cars i then had to take him to his car
This advice is extremely useful to not just Taxi drivers, but all drivers. All SatNav systems have limited data sets and are never as good at understanding roadways compared a human. In the USA, there are many cases where speed limits are both unnecessarily low and seldom enforced (compared to the UK). As a result, few drivers actually follow speed limits, and many SatNavs provide travel time based on current traffic speed rather than legal speed limits. As an example, I had Google Maps tell me that a 3-mile journey on a road with a 30mph speed limit would take 3 minutes… actually averaging 60mph😳 Thank you for sharing this information!! I strongly enjoy your videos.🚕😊
I’ve driven into central London using Garmin sat nav it often didn’t pick up around Marble Arch owing to high buildings: I don’t think sat nav is the whole answer
Apps don't need to be active to use your data. Most settings for people is location always active, which then maps uses that information from every phone that has this active to update Google maps constantly
I’d like to see you use Waze and see if its any different because it can be in taxi mode and knows you’re allowed down taxi only roads and the times of operation and uses live traffic information and is constantly being updated by users on roadworks accidents and other hazards.
I tried it once from Hammersmith gyratory to Lower Richmond road. It wanted me to use the harbour. I just cruised down the bus lane on Fulham Palace Road. I think I caught a breeze from the minutes flying off the time!
In my local area of North East Manchester there’s several streets that have signs saying “Do not follow satnav” as while on the map it’s the most direct route on the map these roads are narrow roads or turns into a dirt country lane halfway through.
Am I missing something or were you not within 10% of Google's estimated time on every route you picked, which just proved that Google and Waze are VERY good at giving you arrival times? Also you don't need to open google or waze for them to add you as a data point. As long as you have your location on, the apps run in the background and collect their datapoints. (gross simplification). I'm pretty sure that when you opened Maps to check the estimated route after you already drove it, Google just calculated how much time it just took you and showed it back to you. They just add a minute or two as a generous add on so you feel better about arriving sooner than what it told you (this can be seen better with shorter routes or walking ones). Your point on Taxi-only routes is good, London is great for allowing taxis into bus lanes and quiet streets, sometimes in central cabbies create congestion in those lanes but it still shaves off some minutes overall.
Can you access the routes for the knowledge to do for fun rather than doing the whole course to be a cab driver? Also all of these back roads are why I stopped using Waze after about 10 years of using it.
I’ve been a self employed courier for 25 years. Im based near Heathrow, I think I know London pretty well. I have Google maps on in the background, I prefer to use my own experience. Google maps doesn’t tell you about roadworks.
Satnav providers can detect traffic jams by analysing a car speed compared to "historical" data. Even if 1 car out of 10 sitting in a jam, is using satnav, that would be enough to get a signal about congestion. They don't need all drivers to be using satnav
The google maps algorithm is the best in the world at generating a point-to-point route. It analyses analogies of historical routing as a feedback loop. It then references any route obstacles (known closures /accidents) before finally using its vast array of devices to generate a layer of live traffic information. And it does all of this in under a fraction of a second. I’m lucky enough to get invited to Google and learn about how their technology works. It is absolutely mind blowing how they are generating useful data from the fairly obscure and mundane. Their next breakthrough will be AI predicting traffic and routing before it forms. It is absolutely hilarious that Tom the London cabby thinks he’s better than the google maps algorithm 😂 Bless!
Ha ha ha ha,why does google maps tell you to do an illegal left turn into westminister bridge from the embankment? Which is forced right,why does it tell you to right into Southwark bridge which is illegal and dangerous? Google maps is crap you have been fooled .street view these illegal turns so you can see for yourself
I did think maybe ‘the knowledge’ was a little outdated until I watched this video. I barely find my way around the relatively quiet streets of Suffolk. I’d need spare underwear for driving in London.
A colleague insists! on having to following his SatNav, even if that means driving through the centre of London "as it's two minutes quicker". I try telling him about other ways to go, but will be met with a reply of "but I don't know that route". Earlier this week I was in central London for the day with a customer, and he had to drive up from the south coast to collect from the Eurostar, I was telling what the traffic was like, and the best way to go, but he still kept saying, "but that's a few minutes longer". I put my SatNav on to get the traffic info, but will often take my own route.
Just drove my cab from Eastbourne to T2 on the m25 the satnav always tell you to use the M4 to arrive at T2 , I shaved 10 minutes by using the perimeter road using the T5 /T4 exit from the m25 , I have never seen my sat nav give me that route
I can understand not using sat nav in the city centre, but some taxi drivers I have encountered don't have any sat nav and I'm trying to get a cab to my house and they can't figure out where it is because, obviously, it's a random house on a random estate how on Earth will they know where that specific house on that specific estate is? Yet they got no sat nav so that's a pain in the arse, I never had that problem in Rome all the taxi drivers there had sat nav, imagine here you're visiting a new friend's house for the first time and you know the address and postcode but you don't know the directions, so you gotta use your own phone's data so you can get directions off Google Maps to give to the the driver if they don't know where it is. Just why??
Question for you tom not related to the video. The rank at kings cross that extends all the way up the road past german gymnasium is it a rank of its own where as the first cab on the separated rank past the lights is essentially 1st to get a job at that bit or is it one whole rank from side of kings cross? Great videos mate. Take care. Hope to see you around. 👍
Satnav can be extremely treacherous. Im a coach drvier and I have 0 idea about the whats and wheres in london. Things can get scary when the satnav sends me down some tight roads you probably shouldnt be taking coach because it thinks its faster then more straight forward roads
I don't think anyone doubts that Taxi drivers are faster than sat nav. I think people feel like sat nav is good enough. I think apps like Uber have disrupted the market in a good way, especially outside zone 1. There is definitely space for both in London and I think one pushes the other to be better. Certainly the black cabbie is a better system than the wild west system in other countries. I took a taxi in Cairo and was scared for my life for most of the journey.
Great video Tom. Satnavs definitely have their place - I just don't think that place is central London. The other thing you didn't touch on, is that when you use a satnav, you're relying on that data being up to date in terms of road closures and changes etc. Apple maps last week, wanted my friend to use South Carriage Drive while we were in town. Slight issue there!
So I drove on holiday from North Devon to Snowdonia and my wife and her twin sister had "google drove it" before me there was a curve ball thrown in Iron Bridge but they had google it anyway so I had a Land Rover sat nav and also a second nav and 2 twin sisters!!! anyway the Land Rover got me to the holiday cottage and no twin sisters was murdered on route JUST LOL xx
Hey Tom. I'm in London twice a week in a 3.5 van. Tried google but find waze is the best to get me out of situations although it does get me in the poo sometimes as it thinks i'm a car ! Always leave London with a headache and stressed, Hats off to you for being seemingly still sane !
One coreciton on people not seeing taxis because they arent using the satnav. Phone satnavs, especially google and apple maps dont actually require the phones to be using satnav to show as traffic. It has been proven by just taking a bunch of phones and placing them in a road that it will show as traffic without the satnav apps being opened. Its just amount of phones in a roadway.
SatNav does know about the road closures during the day an LTNs. They also inform the driver of Safety Cameras A London Taxi driver making use of a SatNav to warn about road closures is untouchable in London
They don't have to be using Waze or Google Maps quote to be registered where you are because it registers where you are regardless. Your phone says information regardless of whether you have the app open or not and if you read the terms and conditions you would know this already. Google absolutely know regardless of whether or not you think you need the Apple not. I don't know about on an iPhone but I know on Android they are always showing her information and very likely on IOS as well.
Lucky you Tom: I drive as a private-hire chauffeur (presently entrusted with a brand-new, fully-loaded BMW I7) and you fellows have so many advantages over us (but still lots of you complain). I wouldn’t have been legally allowed to drive over London Bridge between 7 to 7 and it would probably have taken me about 30 minutes to do what you did.
plus, my car is 6’ 4.3/4” wide, which means that if I did attempt to go over the Albert Bridge and other places with 6’ 6” width restrictions, I’d have a clearance of about 1/2” each side!!! So, I daren’t risk that and therefore have to take that into account as well when driving along. You fellows have it so easy!!!
Totally unresearched comment, but this is what I've been told: since Waze is funded by advertising, it's more likely to send you down a road that contains a sponsor, even at the expense of a faster route. I've not looked into it, so if could be complete BS!
Ways taxi why not make it ways transport. Retro fit to all Old and input to Al new transport vehicles maybe all postal all 999 a tracker for ways so users can see all the movemts and better data
I’ve been following you for a while and I’m a big fan!! Big ups!! It’s amazing seeing you grow the way you are growing (and thanks for introducing me to yfood!) But you know what Tom I think the waze ways argument really brought it home for me. It’s a very valid point on going against the way a system was designed and it adds unnecessary noise.
First of all. I think for a cab driver in London, there's no question that the knowledge is absolutely going to win most of the time against sat-nav. Having said that, I think a lot of the things you attribute as negatives of sat-navs are definitely not that. Some points I'd say are: Multiple stops. This is not difficult in sat-nav. If you know the rough area even a little, you know what order they should be. But, even if you don't. You can put them in, in any order. Look at the map, see it's putting you in loops and just drag the vias into the correct order now you can see the stops on the map. It's a problem with a very simple solution. Lack of data. This will ALWAYS be a problem no matter what. The reason being that everyone is using different sat nav software, and unless they have a central repository of data (this would be a good idea by the way, because then - yes your cab apps you have running in the background could also be sending traffic info into this network) you will never have a perfect picture. However, the problem you ascribe to this, as in the software routing you into unknown roads is precisely no different to when you get traffic info from another cab driver. If a cab driver tells you say Regent Street is busy. So you avoid it and choose another route. But without information you don't know what's around the corner and by avoiding Regent St you might well find yourself in another queue elsewhere. So in this case the sat nav didn't lose, it did what it could with the information it has and it's still better than the alternative of not knowing where traffic definitely is at all. Journey times/traffic lights. First I will preface that I absolutely do not drive in central London unless I have a destination there. I'll take the North Circular or M25 if I am going west to east. But when it comes to longer journeys including trips through towns/cities with lights. I've found Tomtom to be better than google maps (not used waze so much) in giving an accurate time. I would say it is usually +/- 5 minutes per hour driven in accuracy unless something pops up mid-journey (which no-one, not even the cabby with the best knowledge ever can predict). I predict when to start cooking dinner based on estimated arrival times from tomtom. How I think it does this? The law of averages. On a very short journey then luck comes into it. But on a longer journey the odds of being stuck behind lights is averaged out and the journey time can take the chance of that into account. In fact, it doesn't even need to know about traffic lights. It can just take the average time a car takes to traverse that part of a route. One thing I will agree with is the local side road workarounds they employ. I don't think there's a way around this. The reason being that if they didn't route through side streets, especially if routing around traffic, people would just install the software that does. Because most people just want to get where they're going to and avoid traffic where possible. It's the pandora's box. Once opened, you cannot close it, or in this case stop using them unless the local councils close them for through traffic. All in all, interesting video. I'm just not sure many of your points against sat nav are accurate.
There was no video when you said check this video out and put out your hand like a nob lol. But still love your videos mate. I’m not even a taxi driver lol class1 driver tho
No, it means that every average Joe feels like can drive in a busy city like London without knowing jack s. of the layout of this busy city. Hence the advent of amateurs PHV (100.000 currently, thanks to TFL) clogging up the roads everywhere.
@@MikeLitoris With a sat nav, no one ‘needs to know’ the layout of any city, as it is all mapped within the technology. The amusing idea that a cab driver has some sort of special power is delusional 😂 What cabbies don’t understand, is that they were Sat Nav v1.0. They studied and mapped the roads and places, and repeated journeys over and over, to measure and time the distance. Sat Nav 2.0 - this time a device with software - does the exact same, but better; recalibrating its ‘knowledge’ every single second. There isn’t a human on this planet who can outperform one.
@@imconfused1237 definitely can lmao, dickride google maps much? Imagine this scenario: You leave, taking a certain route. By the time you get to a main road, this road is extremely busy with traffic that just formed. You could've known that this road is usually busy around this time, and gone a completely different route, and the google maps "recalculating" will not take you that way as you've already gone halfway in the other direction.
I think a satnav in the software of the TX taxis atleast made for taxi drivers across british cities would be good. Used for Traffic knowledge and stuff.
In my opinion, the argument that SatNavs are aimed at regular car drivers is a bit flawed. If The Knowledge didn't exist I would expect there to be SatNavs tailored to cabbies who would be willing to pay for it since they would need it all the time.
And that's why you cabbies are losing more and more business daily. Without satnav you can't predict what's happening in the future (closed road, traffic etc). Since you charge us for time and distance, you should be delivering the service efficiently and not based on your egotastic "knowledge of the city". I want to move from A to B at the fastest and cheapest way - I don't want to be tought a lesson. Uber / Bolt / Freenow FTW
If I’d blindly follow the sat nav… each job would take longer. The passenger pays more. I earn less. We want to get the punter to the destination as quick as possible so we can start the next job. The meter is designed in this way to incentivise this. Could be a combo of using the sat nav as well as local knowledge. The moral is, don’t believe everything you are told.
@@MrLoopy52 you 're losing business because you 're 3X more expensive from all the apps that use "sat nav", and drive us to our destination within the same time as your "knowledge" or faster
YOU LOVE TALKING TO YOUR SELF YOU ASK THE QUESTION AND ANSWER IT YOUR SELF. THE FACT IS THAT YOU MADE A VIDEO ABOUT KNOWLEDGE TEST APPLICANTS FALLING AND THAT IS WHAT IS REALLY BOTHERING YOU DON'T CRITICISE UBER AND SAT NAVS WHEN THE WHOLE WORLD USES IT AND IT IS A MEANS FOR OTHER DRIVERS TO FEED THERE FAMILIES!!!
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I think traffic data is based on location services being 'on' rather than the satnav being used
Yeah, this is a regular argument of Tom's but it's just wrong. Both Google Maps and Waze use Google Location Services, which are running by default in the background of *every* Android phone. The satnav apps do not have to be open/running to contribute to traffic data.
@@benzo8 Exactly. He hasn’t got a clue how the data is being collected. Literally millions of data points are being assimilated in real time and yet he thinks he’s better than it. Talk about overestimating your ability.
@@imconfused1237 well that's taking it a tad far.
Google location services collects GPS data, however under normal use your device will not be activating the GPS listener regularly enough to make any sort of estimate about traffic. Using Google maps or any navigation app will make your phone query GPS every second, which is rich enough data for Google to determine traffic flow.
The guy in this video hasn't got a clue what he's talking about and that really annoys me., I am collecting that data whether you have to sat nav open or not. Collecting it whether you have the app installed or not makes absolutely no difference.
I’m a chauffeur and spent a lot of time in and out of london. To be honest against people like Tom I feel a fraud, their knowledge of london is outrageous. I’ve had instances where I’ve asked cabbies for help on getting around, especially when there’s issues like road works and they’ve always been top class. You are 100% right Tom, you’d bear sat nav 90% of the time and twice on Sunday. Keep up the good work, black cabs are not only driven by extremely intelligent people but also are a staple of our culture in london.
Beat***!
Every time I've got in a proper London cab with a green badge holder the trip has been more than the sum of it's part. History lesson, political and social commentary (even if I didn't agree with it) and general professionalism and courtesy. Particularly help for people with limited mobility was really appreciated, the new cabs are excellent accessibility wise. I wouldn't waste my time on other options unless I was looking at the tube or a bus.
Long way to say that I can afford extortionate cab fees
@@lyricaljaffacakes2946 they are very fair when you consider the costs involved. It isn't cheap but it is good value and comparable to Uber/private hire.
Google Maps traffic data (and possibly Waze too) is also provided by mobile phone companies, who track the approximate location of every phone in real time. The anonymised data is then sold to satnav providers. This means it only needs people with phones turned on, rather than actively running a satnav app. Somewhere on TH-cam, there is a video of someone a wheelbarrow full of phones for a walk, and causing Google Maps to think there is a massive traffic jam.
Shame google maps doesn’t work properly in central London and if you followed it you would be driving illegally ie tells you to do illegal right turn onto Southwark bridge
I've learned a lot as a cabbie in Malta from your videos about saving time for everyone and getting on to the next fare. For instance today we had a road block so I can't drop directly at the front door of the hotel, but the rear door of the building was next to us. I get to move on and they are still only one door away.
I was in Brussels last week. Needed to use two public hire street taxis. Neither driver had a clue where the street I wanted to go to was. They were also confused by Google Maps and could only follow the map if the Direction option was selected. Wouldn't get that in London. Just goes to show how powerful the Knowledge is. Well done you guys.
Dm you won 🎉
You mentioned loading wheelchairs in the video. Just how accessible is a modern London Cab? Grew up in London, but joined the RAF and moved away in the 80's. I now have a relatively large, well tall, power wheelchair. It's about 1.4m to the top of the headrest. I've tried it with Taxies locally, which are the sort built on the like of the little Transit van. The access ramps always end up being much steeper than one is supposed to use with the chair. It makes loading a real hassle. What also doesn't help is that with the weight of both me and the chair it's getting close to the SWL of a lot of access ramps. Adding in the steepness of the ramp and it's a bit scary. So mostly I tend to limit myself to using buses. Which is a whole other issue living in the depths off the Norfolk Broads these days.
My wife has a largeish power chair and we didn't have any problems loading it into a black cab. The drivers were really helpful and, despite my expectations, didn't quibble in the slightest.
The new Black Cabs were no problem for us with an electric wheelchair and crutch user. The drivers were also more than happy to accommodate us, in fact it seemed like a welcome diversion for them.
It’s a pleasure for me to be able to help less able people enjoy London equally as much as everyone else,,thanks for using us💪
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Fun to watch this was, especially since I previously saw Tom's Collab with @tomscottplus where they raced around London, Tom could only use the knowledge and Tom Scott could only use sat nav. 👍🏻😎
My best Waze was in Wales. It’s route to avoid roadworks involved 12 gates
I would love to see a side by side comparison of you using the Knowledge while someone uses a sat nav for the same route at the same time. Similarly I’d like to see how this differs when you use taxi-only turns/lanes etc vs not.
Tom Scott and I basically did this
@@TomtheTaxiDriver I would love to see the same thing done but for the same destinations across both of you.
@@jamiejosh96 same!
@@jamiejosh96to eliminate the possibility of accusing one of following the other?
When i was driving cabs, I didn't need to use a "GPS" when I was driving in the city centre. You learn the best spots and tricks just through repetition.
Sat navs are great for navigating to places you don't know how to get to. But cab drivers do (or should) know, at least for their area.
Icabbi has waze built in - no inputting needed. Waze also has a taxi option in the settings. Outside of ldn it works well.
i once had a passenger at Marble Arch and he asked me to find his car he had nothing else to tell me no idea where his car was at all it took me over an hour but i finally located the car about 20 miles outside London, it took about 5 or 6 Police stations and a number of Police cars i then had to take him to his car
Thank you Tom, this was the clearest explained reason the knowledge is so important. Great video!!!!!
Great channel Tom. Fast forward 20 years and try it again!
Don't think there will any roads left open in London by that time!
This advice is extremely useful to not just Taxi drivers, but all drivers. All SatNav systems have limited data sets and are never as good at understanding roadways compared a human. In the USA, there are many cases where speed limits are both unnecessarily low and seldom enforced (compared to the UK). As a result, few drivers actually follow speed limits, and many SatNavs provide travel time based on current traffic speed rather than legal speed limits. As an example, I had Google Maps tell me that a 3-mile journey on a road with a 30mph speed limit would take 3 minutes… actually averaging 60mph😳
Thank you for sharing this information!! I strongly enjoy your videos.🚕😊
At 1:20 you described the hotel I always stay in when coming to London!
I’ve driven into central London using Garmin sat nav it often didn’t pick up around Marble Arch owing to high buildings: I don’t think sat nav is the whole answer
Apps don't need to be active to use your data. Most settings for people is location always active, which then maps uses that information from every phone that has this active to update Google maps constantly
I’d like to see you use Waze and see if its any different because it can be in taxi mode and knows you’re allowed down taxi only roads and the times of operation and uses live traffic information and is constantly being updated by users on roadworks accidents and other hazards.
I tried it once from Hammersmith gyratory to Lower Richmond road. It wanted me to use the harbour. I just cruised down the bus lane on Fulham Palace Road. I think I caught a breeze from the minutes flying off the time!
@@TomtheTaxiDriver Interesting!
Silly question why is the dashboard blurred. Understand when cars are spending but don't think you are. Thanx
In my local area of North East Manchester there’s several streets that have signs saying “Do not follow satnav” as while on the map it’s the most direct route on the map these roads are narrow roads or turns into a dirt country lane halfway through.
Dm you won 🎉
Am I missing something or were you not within 10% of Google's estimated time on every route you picked, which just proved that Google and Waze are VERY good at giving you arrival times? Also you don't need to open google or waze for them to add you as a data point. As long as you have your location on, the apps run in the background and collect their datapoints. (gross simplification). I'm pretty sure that when you opened Maps to check the estimated route after you already drove it, Google just calculated how much time it just took you and showed it back to you. They just add a minute or two as a generous add on so you feel better about arriving sooner than what it told you (this can be seen better with shorter routes or walking ones).
Your point on Taxi-only routes is good, London is great for allowing taxis into bus lanes and quiet streets, sometimes in central cabbies create congestion in those lanes but it still shaves off some minutes overall.
i drive everyday in london and sat nav is useless in the city. i only use it to check traffic in certain areas
Can you access the routes for the knowledge to do for fun rather than doing the whole course to be a cab driver?
Also all of these back roads are why I stopped using Waze after about 10 years of using it.
Yes they are called Blue Books
I’ve been a self employed courier for 25 years.
Im based near Heathrow, I think I know London pretty well.
I have Google maps on in the background, I prefer to use my own experience.
Google maps doesn’t tell you about roadworks.
Satnav providers can detect traffic jams by analysing a car speed compared to "historical" data. Even if 1 car out of 10 sitting in a jam, is using satnav, that would be enough to get a signal about congestion. They don't need all drivers to be using satnav
Technology can beat a man, but it can't beat a highly skilled man like Tom here.
Surely the apps don’t just use live data, and use historical data as well to calculate the travel times?
The google maps algorithm is the best in the world at generating a point-to-point route. It analyses analogies of historical routing as a feedback loop. It then references any route obstacles (known closures /accidents) before finally using its vast array of devices to generate a layer of live traffic information. And it does all of this in under a fraction of a second.
I’m lucky enough to get invited to Google and learn about how their technology works. It is absolutely mind blowing how they are generating useful data from the fairly obscure and mundane. Their next breakthrough will be AI predicting traffic and routing before it forms.
It is absolutely hilarious that Tom the London cabby thinks he’s better than the google maps algorithm 😂 Bless!
Ha ha ha ha,why does google maps tell you to do an illegal left turn into westminister bridge from the embankment? Which is forced right,why does it tell you to right into Southwark bridge which is illegal and dangerous? Google maps is crap you have been fooled .street view these illegal turns so you can see for yourself
love that you blur your Speedometer lol. Great video Tom..
I run speed limiter at 20mph, it's a life saver
If you had to do any other job, what would it be and why?
Barista… I like flow and routine
I would sell my kidney for black cab because drive on bus lanes and it don’t look bad
@@theridiculousnicolaus Ehhhh, bit too far i think. I'd just use the bus.
I'm coming back over in September and as an old hand I will rely on the Black Cab and The Knowledge.
I did think maybe ‘the knowledge’ was a little outdated until I watched this video. I barely find my way around the relatively quiet streets of Suffolk. I’d need spare underwear for driving in London.
Keep the videos coming you do a great job.🍻
It would be good if you could tell Google to always use the shortest route, not the fastest.
Thanks Tom ❤
Awesome vid. Hopefully TFL watch with interest!
I saw two old boys in Stratford yesterday following a pink ordanance survey map.
A colleague insists! on having to following his SatNav, even if that means driving through the centre of London "as it's two minutes quicker". I try telling him about other ways to go, but will be met with a reply of "but I don't know that route". Earlier this week I was in central London for the day with a customer, and he had to drive up from the south coast to collect from the Eurostar, I was telling what the traffic was like, and the best way to go, but he still kept saying, "but that's a few minutes longer". I put my SatNav on to get the traffic info, but will often take my own route.
I think you might have meant insists! 😂😂
@@lee53_ Thanks & corrected
Just drove my cab from Eastbourne to T2 on the m25 the satnav always tell you to use the M4 to arrive at T2 , I shaved 10 minutes by using the perimeter road using the T5 /T4 exit from the m25 , I have never seen my sat nav give me that route
I can understand not using sat nav in the city centre, but some taxi drivers I have encountered don't have any sat nav and I'm trying to get a cab to my house and they can't figure out where it is because, obviously, it's a random house on a random estate how on Earth will they know where that specific house on that specific estate is? Yet they got no sat nav so that's a pain in the arse, I never had that problem in Rome all the taxi drivers there had sat nav, imagine here you're visiting a new friend's house for the first time and you know the address and postcode but you don't know the directions, so you gotta use your own phone's data so you can get directions off Google Maps to give to the the driver if they don't know where it is. Just why??
How come you blur your speedo? just curious :)
Question for you tom not related to the video. The rank at kings cross that extends all the way up the road past german gymnasium is it a rank of its own where as the first cab on the separated rank past the lights is essentially 1st to get a job at that bit or is it one whole rank from side of kings cross? Great videos mate. Take care. Hope to see you around. 👍
It’s all for King’s Cross but each separate bit is it’s own rank, so the customer doesn’t have to walk all the way to the front 👍🏻
Thanks tom. Take care mate
Honestly Tom, the amount of times I’ve had people hello why you going this way!!! Satnavs ok but sometimes take you around the houses!! ✌️❤️
Satnav can be extremely treacherous. Im a coach drvier and I have 0 idea about the whats and wheres in london. Things can get scary when the satnav sends me down some tight roads you probably shouldnt be taking coach because it thinks its faster then more straight forward roads
Nicely done
I don't think anyone doubts that Taxi drivers are faster than sat nav. I think people feel like sat nav is good enough. I think apps like Uber have disrupted the market in a good way, especially outside zone 1. There is definitely space for both in London and I think one pushes the other to be better. Certainly the black cabbie is a better system than the wild west system in other countries. I took a taxi in Cairo and was scared for my life for most of the journey.
Excellent information. When we return to London, how to we make reservations with you?
I hope this doesn't seem rude but your skin is looking really good. Have you changed your routine?
Antibiotics.. but as soon as I stop the course… it comes back 😫
Great video Tom. Satnavs definitely have their place - I just don't think that place is central London. The other thing you didn't touch on, is that when you use a satnav, you're relying on that data being up to date in terms of road closures and changes etc. Apple maps last week, wanted my friend to use South Carriage Drive while we were in town. Slight issue there!
Why do you blur your speed on the dashboard?
Great video and a few wiggles too. 🎉😂
So I drove on holiday from North Devon to Snowdonia and my wife and her twin sister had "google drove it" before me there was a curve ball thrown in Iron Bridge but they had google it anyway so I had a Land Rover sat nav and also a second nav and 2 twin sisters!!! anyway the Land Rover got me to the holiday cottage and no twin sisters was murdered on route JUST LOL xx
Are Yfood shakes gluten free as they have lots of carbohydrates?
Lactose and gluten free 😊
Great video Sir
Hey Tom. I'm in London twice a week in a 3.5 van. Tried google but find waze is the best to get me out of situations although it does get me in the poo sometimes as it thinks i'm a car ! Always leave London with a headache and stressed, Hats off to you for being seemingly still sane !
Can i ask what year your taxi is and cab you use them in any city not just london
Not every city, but you can use them in a lot of cities.
One coreciton on people not seeing taxis because they arent using the satnav. Phone satnavs, especially google and apple maps dont actually require the phones to be using satnav to show as traffic. It has been proven by just taking a bunch of phones and placing them in a road that it will show as traffic without the satnav apps being opened. Its just amount of phones in a roadway.
Would london cabbies benefit from having an private uhf radio channel that they can use to get info regarding traffic from fellow cabbies?
😂 A Sat Nav LITERALLY does this!
We have WhatsApp groups with thousands of cabby’s updating live traffic data the second it happens
@@JackDonnelly-sb8dp fair enough. But doesn't that involve tapping away on your phone and risking a fine?
@@imconfused1237 thanks for your input dipshit.
@@jaserobert2758 that’s alright grandad
SatNav does know about the road closures during the day an LTNs.
They also inform the driver of Safety Cameras
A London Taxi driver making use of a SatNav to warn about road closures is untouchable in London
excellent again tom.
i wonder what an average day using google timeline would look like as a london taxi driver?
They don't have to be using Waze or Google Maps quote to be registered where you are because it registers where you are regardless. Your phone says information regardless of whether you have the app open or not and if you read the terms and conditions you would know this already. Google absolutely know regardless of whether or not you think you need the Apple not. I don't know about on an iPhone but I know on Android they are always showing her information and very likely on IOS as well.
All well and good if you have the app ;)
Lucky you Tom: I drive as a private-hire chauffeur (presently entrusted with a brand-new, fully-loaded BMW I7) and you fellows have so many advantages over us (but still lots of you complain). I wouldn’t have been legally allowed to drive over London Bridge between 7 to 7 and it would probably have taken me about 30 minutes to do what you did.
plus, my car is 6’ 4.3/4” wide, which means that if I did attempt to go over the Albert Bridge and other places with 6’ 6” width restrictions, I’d have a clearance of about 1/2” each side!!! So, I daren’t risk that and therefore have to take that into account as well when driving along. You fellows have it so easy!!!
Do the knowledge!
Passenger jumps in..stick meter on then fill details into sat nav..meter is on you get paid..stop complicating everything...
If you’d had trimmed your video by 5 seconds, it would have been as quick and efficient as your last trip in the cab 😋
Now that is a super spot. I believe the length of time of the second trip appears at exactly the same timecode in the video oddly enough!
I think over time sat nav will improve
Totally unresearched comment, but this is what I've been told: since Waze is funded by advertising, it's more likely to send you down a road that contains a sponsor, even at the expense of a faster route.
I've not looked into it, so if could be complete BS!
Gibberish. It’s owned by Google.
Could you not overtake the van?
You mean drive onto the pavement?
@@naderkhouri9468 yes thats exactly what I meant you dafty
Honestly if he weren't a cab and got out and signaled to people on the sidewalk I'd have no issue with passing on the sidewalk tbh
It's best to combine a sat nav with one's own knowledge. Use it intelligently.
Ways taxi why not make it ways transport. Retro fit to all Old and input to Al new transport vehicles maybe all postal all 999 a tracker for ways so users can see all the movemts and better data
I do
Time delay putting a postcode in satnav? 😂😂
I’m already off the races whilst you battle with auto correct…
@@TomtheTaxiDriver a tad over exaggerated the time it take’s putting a postcode in and pressing go
Ohh no there's no Linked vodeo at the end
bloody hell... waze is the worst.. :D :D Used a few times, i regret every one of them
I’ve been following you for a while and I’m a big fan!! Big ups!! It’s amazing seeing you grow the way you are growing (and thanks for introducing me to yfood!)
But you know what Tom I think the waze ways argument really brought it home for me. It’s a very valid point on going against the way a system was designed and it adds unnecessary noise.
Ever done a video without mentioning the knowledge?
Sounds impossible!
First of all. I think for a cab driver in London, there's no question that the knowledge is absolutely going to win most of the time against sat-nav.
Having said that, I think a lot of the things you attribute as negatives of sat-navs are definitely not that. Some points I'd say are:
Multiple stops. This is not difficult in sat-nav. If you know the rough area even a little, you know what order they should be. But, even if you don't. You can put them in, in any order. Look at the map, see it's putting you in loops and just drag the vias into the correct order now you can see the stops on the map. It's a problem with a very simple solution.
Lack of data. This will ALWAYS be a problem no matter what. The reason being that everyone is using different sat nav software, and unless they have a central repository of data (this would be a good idea by the way, because then - yes your cab apps you have running in the background could also be sending traffic info into this network) you will never have a perfect picture. However, the problem you ascribe to this, as in the software routing you into unknown roads is precisely no different to when you get traffic info from another cab driver. If a cab driver tells you say Regent Street is busy. So you avoid it and choose another route. But without information you don't know what's around the corner and by avoiding Regent St you might well find yourself in another queue elsewhere. So in this case the sat nav didn't lose, it did what it could with the information it has and it's still better than the alternative of not knowing where traffic definitely is at all.
Journey times/traffic lights. First I will preface that I absolutely do not drive in central London unless I have a destination there. I'll take the North Circular or M25 if I am going west to east. But when it comes to longer journeys including trips through towns/cities with lights. I've found Tomtom to be better than google maps (not used waze so much) in giving an accurate time. I would say it is usually +/- 5 minutes per hour driven in accuracy unless something pops up mid-journey (which no-one, not even the cabby with the best knowledge ever can predict). I predict when to start cooking dinner based on estimated arrival times from tomtom. How I think it does this? The law of averages. On a very short journey then luck comes into it. But on a longer journey the odds of being stuck behind lights is averaged out and the journey time can take the chance of that into account. In fact, it doesn't even need to know about traffic lights. It can just take the average time a car takes to traverse that part of a route.
One thing I will agree with is the local side road workarounds they employ. I don't think there's a way around this. The reason being that if they didn't route through side streets, especially if routing around traffic, people would just install the software that does. Because most people just want to get where they're going to and avoid traffic where possible. It's the pandora's box. Once opened, you cannot close it, or in this case stop using them unless the local councils close them for through traffic.
All in all, interesting video. I'm just not sure many of your points against sat nav are accurate.
Don't use an electric then....use horses 😂
R Bread Street L Cannon Street! No QVS on this run… just sayin’ 🙄
we all make mistakes.. there’s an asterix on screen
There was no video when you said check this video out and put out your hand like a nob lol. But still love your videos mate. I’m not even a taxi driver lol class1 driver tho
Should be, I did add it 👍🏻
I found some yfood
So if it's targeted towards the normal driver and not for taxis, does this mean that is sucks?
No, it means that every average Joe feels like can drive in a busy city like London without knowing jack s. of the layout of this busy city.
Hence the advent of amateurs PHV (100.000 currently, thanks to TFL) clogging up the roads everywhere.
@@freedom495 By average Joe you mean a tourist or outsider, who doesn't know London?
@@MikeLitoris With a sat nav, no one ‘needs to know’ the layout of any city, as it is all mapped within the technology. The amusing idea that a cab driver has some sort of special power is delusional 😂
What cabbies don’t understand, is that they were Sat Nav v1.0. They studied and mapped the roads and places, and repeated journeys over and over, to measure and time the distance.
Sat Nav 2.0 - this time a device with software - does the exact same, but better; recalibrating its ‘knowledge’ every single second. There isn’t a human on this planet who can outperform one.
@@imconfused1237 definitely can lmao, dickride google maps much? Imagine this scenario: You leave, taking a certain route. By the time you get to a main road, this road is extremely busy with traffic that just formed. You could've known that this road is usually busy around this time, and gone a completely different route, and the google maps "recalculating" will not take you that way as you've already gone halfway in the other direction.
I think a satnav in the software of the TX taxis atleast made for taxi drivers across british cities would be good. Used for Traffic knowledge and stuff.
Tom
In my opinion, the argument that SatNavs are aimed at regular car drivers is a bit flawed. If The Knowledge didn't exist I would expect there to be SatNavs tailored to cabbies who would be willing to pay for it since they would need it all the time.
And that's why you cabbies are losing more and more business daily. Without satnav you can't predict what's happening in the future (closed road, traffic etc). Since you charge us for time and distance, you should be delivering the service efficiently and not based on your egotastic "knowledge of the city". I want to move from A to B at the fastest and cheapest way - I don't want to be tought a lesson. Uber / Bolt / Freenow FTW
If I’d blindly follow the sat nav… each job would take longer. The passenger pays more. I earn less.
We want to get the punter to the destination as quick as possible so we can start the next job. The meter is designed in this way to incentivise this.
Could be a combo of using the sat nav as well as local knowledge. The moral is, don’t believe everything you are told.
Who told you we’re losing money daily? Business has been good since lockdown. Dream on son.
@@MrLoopy52 you 're losing business because you 're 3X more expensive from all the apps that use "sat nav", and drive us to our destination within the same time as your "knowledge" or faster
@@YannisKaragiannidis Ha ha dream on son. You sound like someone who failed the knowledge. By the way, business is very good. Be lucky, old chap 😄
By the way, it’s ’taught’, not ‘tought’. And what’s ‘egotastic’, did you mean ‘egotistic’? Just saying for a friend 😂
YOU LOVE TALKING TO YOUR SELF YOU ASK THE QUESTION AND ANSWER IT YOUR SELF. THE FACT IS THAT YOU MADE A VIDEO ABOUT KNOWLEDGE TEST APPLICANTS FALLING AND THAT IS WHAT IS REALLY BOTHERING YOU DON'T CRITICISE UBER AND SAT NAVS WHEN THE WHOLE WORLD USES IT AND IT IS A MEANS FOR OTHER DRIVERS TO FEED THERE FAMILIES!!!
Firstly, that's not a Sat Nav, it's a phone ( yes they are different) , secondly it's likely you had selected limitations in the settings.
Thinks he’s smarter than an algorithm 😂
He is
He most definitely is.
No. He most definitely isn’t. To think you are, is not only deludingly hilarious but it is also the height of ignorance and arrogance.
you think a simple algorithm is smarter than a human that's professionally trained and has memorised most streets of central london
lol he definitely is
Should have shown the map more