Did they post a DNF?

[+tozainamboku]

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/110...Faulty_GPS.html

[+OHMIKY]

heard this story on the radio this morning - my only reaction was 'maybe they should learn to read the thing'

[+erikwillke]

I mean really, I think I would notice right away that the hospital was 200 miles away and confirmed my destination with the sending party. Sounds like maybe they WANTED to go out of the way.

 

Maybe I'm wrong

[+KBI]

The 10-mile trip within London should have taken less than half an hour. But the crew, having never driven to the destination before, relied only on the vehicle's GPS system. They didn't fathom that something was amiss until they had reached the outskirts of Manchester, more than 200 miles north of London.

England has miles?

 

I thought they had kilofathoms, or hectopaschals, or whutever them fur-un thangys R called.

 

Thar’s yer trubble, right thar.

[+Renegade Knight]

Who knows what they were thinking. It helps to have some clue of where you are headed. If I'm heading to Washington and hit Wyoming and then Nebraska on my trip It would be fairly obviouse (before I hit Nebraska...) that I must have typed in Washington DC on accident.

[+Jhwk]

Nothing is fool proof to a set of sufficiently motivated fools.

[+wandererrob]

Nothing is fool proof to a set of sufficiently motivated fools.

 

Quoted for posterity. That's signature material right there!

[+Cornerstone4]

heard this story on the radio this morning - my only reaction was 'maybe they should learn to read the thing'

 

Maybe the hospital was rated a 5-Star terrain for distance...

 

Or maybe the trip was a multi, and they were headed to the first WP...

[+emurock]

Over reliance on the GPS much.

[+DavidMac]

England has miles?

 

I thought they had kilofathoms, or hectopaschals, or whutever them fur-un thangys R called.

 

Thar’s yer trubble, right thar.

 

Yes, the UK still uses miles for distances. Speeds are also posted in miles per hour. They do use the metric system for just about everything else, though (with the exception of beer, which you can still get by the pint ).

Edited December 7, 2006 by DavidMac

[+BuxCamper]

My neighbor and I went to a ham radio conference a couple of weeks ago near the Jersey shore (we live near Philadelphia). He was sure he knew the way (and I'm not familiar with that area so I took his word on it) but his wife's car's GPS kept telling us to turn. I thought it was always trying to bring us back to the original route. No it was smarter than us. We ended up an hour off course! Once we followed its instructions, it got us to the place.

 

Moral; look at what its telling you and CHECK THE ETA AND DISTANCE.

[+boda]

My neighbor and I went to a ham radio conference a couple of weeks ago near the Jersey shore (we live near Philadelphia). He was sure he knew the way (and I'm not familiar with that area so I took his word on it) but his wife's car's GPS kept telling us to turn. I thought it was always trying to bring us back to the original route. No it was smarter than us. We ended up an hour off course! Once we followed its instructions, it got us to the place.

 

Moral; look at what its telling you and CHECK THE ETA AND DISTANCE.

 

We were on a trip with friends that we cache and travel with often. We had reservations in a motel 2 miles south of the San Francisco airport. As we approached from the south, their car GPS said nothing and showed that we were to go north of the airport. We followed it because of problems similar to those faced by BuxCamper above. We've learned our lesson-trust the GPS.

 

Well, we were dumped out on a road north of the airport with the proud annoucement that we had arrived at our destination.

 

I finally took out the handheld, looked up a cache near the motel and pressed goto. That took us to our destination and we no longer completely trusted the GPS.

 

On the same trip we found a hotel on the opposite side of the road from where Garmin's Mapsend maps showed it to be.

[Neos2]

On a trip last spring, my gps kept giving different routing than my husband's gps for the same locations. I thought that was odd, especially since I loaded all the info in both units from the same PQs and mapping software, one after the other.

 

We deferred to his unit, since it does such a nice job for him with his work, where he frequently has to go places he has never been before. It wasn't until we were nearly at our hotel that we realized that his unit had still been set to follow truck routes. We probably drove a few miles out of small vehicle route on that trip!