My Sense of Misdirection II

My sense of direction when walking has gotten slightly better as I am now more familiar with places where walking is required, such as the City, Cabramatta or my house. But now, my sense of misdirection has evolved, or devolved to my driving skills.

It's not that I'm bad with directions or anything, I feel I have pretty good direction skills, I can read a street directory just fine and can work my way out of where I am when I'm stuck. It's more my ego getting in the way of driving properly, leading me to unknown places.
When I'm driving with someone, I usually can rely on them to help navigate when I'm not sure where I'm going, and with the mass amount of slightly long distance driving I go on, I tend to rely on others than try to work out how to get to places myself, only because there are so many others who know the way, my services as a driver should be enough that I shouldn't take the role of a navigator too, though logically the driver should know where he is going, but I'm not always logical.

Often times I drive alone, whether it is a case of I'm going somewhere, or I've dropped someone home and have to make my wake home by myself. In slightly local areas I'm fine with where to go and how to get there but with other areas I'm in a suburban jungle, lost amongst the tree-houses and viney roads. I know that if ever I dropped someone off in the Bossley Park area I'd never find my way back home without a street directory. I have a bad habit of when I drop someone home, I would try to get home on instinct alone, and most times I do alright, because you just go back the way you came. Other times the road orientation changes, such as in Bankstown, and because I drive at night, it's even worse for me, and instinct alone usually finds me on the side of the street with my street directory out, trying to work out how to get back onto a main road.

Getting lost when I'm alone is bearable though, because it's only me that's getting lost, but when I'm with a passenger, not knowing where to go, the line, "I think it's this way" may not be the most comforting line to hear when you're driving about.
Some people would recommend a GPS to help guide you around, but my experience with them haven't been that great, mainly because they never go the way I want them too, and their instructions aren't very clear, "Bear right at the next turn", the first time I heard this I didn't know whether to turn right or to watch out for a bear, needless to say there was no bear, and I turned right, where upon the GPS scolded me and told me to go back, not happy with their weird instructions I wanted to turn it off but doing so would've left me even more lost. I think the idea of following a machine's instructions turned me off from GPS's, that or the fact that I don't have my own GPS has turned me off from them.
The way my mind works is like a videogame's map of the area, it's all covered in fog, unseen to the eye, unseen until you reach the area and then the fog clears and you know the area and what is in it. Unfortunately, when you don't visit the area often, like a video game the fog consumes that area again, becomeing unknown to you, leaving you to go back to it to discover it again. Unlike a videogame, the changes in the area aren't so big like a new enemy base has emerged or a hoard of enemies have been waiting for you.
Either way, until I get a GPS, memorise a street directory or my road instincts severely improve I'll be relying on my passenger, the car leading infront of me or my already known street smarts to get to where I want to get to. Lets hope I don't get too lost on the way there.