I think that aviation differs to most other spheres of human activity in that you just can't afford to c0ck it up.
With a car, you can do more or less anything and provided you don't hit anything, nothing of significance is likely to happen. You can stop and ask instructions, etc.
Even with a helicopter you can land and have a pee, ask instructions, etc. If you get cornered by solid IMC all the way to ground, you can land and sit there as long as needed.
But when flying fixed wing, getting really lost is a really major major problem
The best that can happen is that you somehow manage to find an airfield, land, and sort yourself out. This will still be a significant hassle, because you will have made a total
pr*ck of yourself, and you may not have enough fuel to get back. In some scenarios, in short-range spamcans (Cessna 150 etc) you may not have enough fuel to fly to some place that has fuel... Outside the UK, the fuel situation gets worse and getting lost is likely to be a major problem.
Then, things get worse. If you run out of fuel, and pull off a perfect forced landing (chances are you won't pull off a perfect forced landing because if you were a big enough plonker to get totally lost and wondered around until you ran out, your decision making isn't that great all round) it is pretty likely that the plane will have to go back on a trailer, minus the wings. That is a ~ £3000 bill, minimum. If you were renting then you will escape the immediate bill but you won't escape the extra attention you will get before your next flight.
And things get worse than that. The most likely thing, in the south of England especially, is that you will bust some controlled airspace. There are a few hundred major (causing commercial traffic to be diverted, etc) busts every year and most people just get a talking to by the CAA. And rest assured that if you get into trouble, the CAA won't give you any points for having navigated "properly" like your grandfather.
So far, there hasn't been a GAT-CAT mid-air (in the UK) but it would take only one for some big changes to take place. This is all the more likely to happen with under-equipped planes because they are much less likely to have a transponder so ATC may not see you and the airliner will not get the TCAS protection.
The worst thing is that if the pilot is lost and then enters IMC to top things off. Then, not knowing where you are (relative to terrain) is just great. This happens regularly, too.
This is why I can't understand why pilots don't embrace the best available technology.
This isn't some kind of macho "fly with a stopwatch and you will grow extra hairs on your chest" quest. It was OK in 1910, 1930, even 1950. But the stakes are too high now to keep f***king up with WW1 navigation.
Now, I am sure that most pilots are intelligent people and they know all this. Many somehow convince themselves that they know what they are doing and they will never make a mistake. The smarter ones do know they can make a mistake and they spend most of their airborne time petrified about getting done by the CAA, instead of knowing
exactly where they are, for no effort at all, and enjoying the flight