To trust GPS or not to trust GPS?

Advisory: this entry is probably only interesting to people who like details about maps and directions.

I'm still getting used to how my new GPS gives directions, and I don't have it set up so that I can see the screen while I'm driving because that's too distracting for me, so I don't trust it 100%. This morning I thought I knew what it wanted me to do and I was confused when I thought it was giving me an instruction at the wrong time, but I was actually at an unusual freeway exit that had two opportunities to turn left off the exit ramp, and I turned left at the first one when I should have turned left at the second one.

Still confused, I ignored the next instruction it gave me because by the time I figured out that I really should have followed it, I was past the turn it requested. So I took the third-best instruction and wound up really confused for a while because I thought I was cutting over to a nearby road that I wanted to be on, but in fact I was paralleling that road for about ten minutes before cutting over to it.

I'm sure I will learn how this GPS thinks, but I'm not quite there yet. The first map shows the route I should have taken:



The second map shows the route I actually took:


And the third map shows the exit. I turned left on 45 when I should have turned left on 62:




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