The road map still holds its own against GPS navigation (at least in The Netherlands)

Modern road maps emerged in the 20th century, driven by the rise of the automobile, which was patented in January 1886 by German engineer and inventor Carl Benz. The first publisher to print road maps at a national scale, in 1904, was the American firm Rand McNally. In 1910 the French brothers André and Édouard Michelin, founders of the well-known tire company, created the famous guide to Europe, and later produced other related documents.

Today, these cartographic representations of transportation networks include information on tolls, signage, rest areas and even tourist attractions. More than a century later, the classic paper road map still holds its own against GPS (Global Positioning System) navigation: in the Netherlands the Royal Dutch Touring Club ANWB offers two million free copies to its five million members — in a country of just 18 million people.

The GPS system will likely remain on during the car trip, but spreading a physical map on a table and tracing one’s planned route still has appeal. If kept in the glove compartment, it can also get you out of trouble when the technology fails or there is poor reception. The ANWB renews its maps every two years because interest in them has not waned, and the favorite destinations of Dutch motorists are in Europe: from Scandinavia to the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary.

“We asked our members whether they would prefer to have our road maps in digital format, and the answer is that they still like having a printed copy,” Annelies Tichelaar, a spokeswoman for the association, says by phone. “They can underline the route with a pen and prepare it more thoroughly than with the fragments shown by the navigator,” she adds.

Planning the trip by marking the places you want to visit and showing children where the highlighted roads run, or the difference in color that marks rivers, “offers a tangible and stimulating perspective,” Tichelaar adds. The traditional road map, with its maze of lines, can also be useful for introducing children to basic topography as part of the excitement of a holiday.

The dangers of blind trusting GPS

From the year 2000, cartographic data that had been carefully marked by hand for decades were integrated into Geographic Information Systems (GIS). On the other hand, GPS systems can provide an exact real-time location regardless of distance. But because they change how we travel and even how we navigate spaces, they are sometimes followed to the letter.

In February 2026, a survey conducted by the TV program Hart van Nederland (Heart of the Netherlands) showed that in 2025, 17% of respondents had at some point driven onto a road where vehicles were not allowed. Another 10% had to turn back after the navigation system took them into a dangerous place. Meanwhile, 26% of drivers said they had committed a traffic violation because they followed digital directions blindly. One percent nearly had an accident for that reason.

At the ANWB, which also runs the roadside assistance service for breakdowns, officials admit that GPS devices are important and that their use is widespread. But planning the trip with a paper map open to see the whole route provides a different kind of inspiration. Then you fold it and keep it in the vehicle, “and because it doesn’t need batteries, it never fails,” the spokeswoman says with a smile.

Long, long before we leaned over a printed map or followed the instructions of a GPS device, there were already other kinds of road guides: those of the Roman Empire, among the best known of which is the so-called Antonine Itinerary, thought to have been compiled in the third century and listing some of the empire’s main routes. Another is the Tabula Peutingeriana, which started to be developed in the 4th century and covered Europe and parts of Asia and North Africa. Conrad Peutinger, a German humanist who owned an impressive private library, published it in the 16th century. Although it is not to scale like modern maps, it showed rivers, seas, mountains, buildings, bathhouses, ports and lighthouses alongside the roads.

Roman causeways were also the beaten path of tax collectors, who might travel escorted by guards depending on the amounts they carried. With a little imagination, the complete Tabula Peutingeriana could be seen as a forerunner of the gleaming guides that were to come and have not disappeared despite many predictions.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition