Binghamton’s Sense of Direction Among Worst in New York

I was headed from Vestal Center to Endicott and knew exactly where I was going, but a small voice from the backseat chirped up and told me that he would be happy to be my backseat GPS and help me get to where we were headed.

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I chuckled as I told my son that if he knew which turns I needed to make, he was more than welcome to call them out but that I grew up in the days before GPS and was pretty good at knowing where to go. My eight year old was completely baffled by how his mom could have possibly grown up without GPS technology and asked how we knew how to get places when I was a kid.

I explained that we either paid very close attention, wrote directions on a piece of paper, or if we were really unsure about where we were going, we would lay a map on the table and draw out a plan before folding up the map and taking it in the car with us.

I can’t say that I miss the days of pouring over a map because GPS technology makes getting places so much easier but at the same time, I can’t help but think that constant use of our GPS devices has in a way, led to this.

New research has uncovered which states and which towns within each state have the most searches for “Google Maps.” In New York over the course of the last year, there were over four million searches for the Google Maps which puts New York residents at number 13 on a list of the states that use maps to get to where we need to go.

But wait, there’s more.

The research dug even deeper to find out which towns in New York have the most searches for directions and which towns have residents most likely to get lost because of poor sense of direction. Albany, Rochester, and Buffalo were the top three places in New York with residents who don’t have the best sense of direction which isn’t all that surprising because they’re well populated.

However, this was surprising. Landing at number four on the list of towns in New York with direction challenged residents is Binghamton.

That’s right – this study found that although Binghamton only had 17,140 searches for “Google Maps” in the last year, the Searches for “Google Maps” per 100 of population in Binghamton was 35.6 which placed us at the fourth highest ranked place in New York searching for help to get to where we need to go.