Malaysia Road System

An automotive navigation system is a satellite navigation system designed for use in automobiles. Unlike other GPS systems, these use position data to locate the user on a road in the unit's map database. Using the road database, the unit can give directions to other locations along roads also in its database

- Wikipedia

This is how I'd imagine if this system is implemented in Malaysia:

System : Estimated time of arrival = 10 minutes. Turn left at next junction
Driver : Daydreaming and accidently missed the turn.
System : You've missed the turn. Adding 1 hour to the estimated time of arrival.

No, I don't think I'm exaggerating. This is the reality if your driving in KL without knowing your way around - then making a wrong turn. The Malaysia road system punishes people for error.

KL roads are horrendous if you don't know the way in that particular area, so let's look at the North-South Expressway instead. Let's just say you've missed an exit. Now wouldn't it be nice if at the next exit there's an immediate U-turn that allows you to get back into the highway in the opposite direction.

But no, you'd have to drive to the town and find a suitable place to make a U-turn. What if you're not familiar with the town? How far do you have to go before you'll be able to make that turn?

This reminds me of the User Interface Philosophy used when making a user-friendly system:

"When a user makes an error, allow the user to recover from the error"

And thus the "CTRL-Z" hotkey was borned. Road systems should be planned the same way as well. Perhaps there are factors that makes this hard to be implemented, but I would expect at the very least that if you've missed an exit:

• you'd be able to take the next exit


• re-enter the main road in the opposite direction


• enter the exit you've missed from the other side of the road


• and still be able to get to your destination with ease