GPS-led travel goes amiss

[+TexasGringo]

How far would you drive before you figure out....this ain't the right way?

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100102/ap_on_...anded_motorists

[+Team Cotati]

How far would you drive before you figure out....this ain't the right way?

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100102/ap_on_...anded_motorists

 

Hilarious.

[+Gitchee-Gummee]

And they already have a kid? OMG!

 

Nothing new really, getting lost because of technology.

Just think, we now have all-wheel drive;

anti-lock brake systems;

traction control;

now, turn-by-turn GPS units...........

 

Just when do you think that humanity will finally rely on brain-power, instead of technology to accomplish the most dangerous thing that they (most, anyway) will do in their entire life -- driving a vehicle?

[7rxc]

How far would you drive before you figure out....this ain't the right way?

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100102/ap_on_...anded_motorists

 

Hilarious.

 

At least they didn't admit to being on a caching trip... glad they weren't actually.

Good reason for the skills required to be taught, and the important bit about filing trip plans with a reliable person...

 

Doug

[+cycler48]

Hmmmm ... I use my GPS devices to keep me out of trouble rather than get me into it.

[+brslk]

"If you are following your GPS and all of a sudden you find yourself in the middle of nowhere with snow all around, don't go there. Turn around."

 

Gee.. ya think?

[+flask]

there's this sign in east arlington, VT, near one of my favored campsites.

 

[+Gitchee-Gummee]

there's this sign in east arlington, VT, near one of my favored campsites.

 

 

That's great..... but do you really expect those people to slow down and actually read the sign?

[+cycler48]

there's this sign in east arlington, VT, near one of my favored campsites.

 

 

That's great..... but do you really expect those people to slow down and actually read the sign?

 

hahahaha ... that's funny. People ignore signs all the time.

[+kunarion]

How far would you drive before you figure out....this ain't the right way?

Obviously the GPS snow detector circuit was faulty. And what if a road had washed out! They could have been KILLED by driving over a washed out section of road. For that matter, what’s to keep these people from driving right into oncoming traffic? Stupid GPS. It's dangerous.

[+Woodstramp]

there's this sign in east arlington, VT, near one of my favored campsites.

 

 

That's great..... but do you really expect those people to slow down and actually read the sign?

 

hahahaha ... that's funny. People ignore signs all the time.

 

That sign is screaming for a micro! Maybe that'll get more GPS owner attention.

[+DanOCan]

I think there are some good points in the article:

 

The AAA and the National Association for Search and Rescue say they don't sense a surge in trips that go amiss because of a blind reliance on GPS directions, but they hear about them from time to time.

 

"It's usually about every other month," said Christie Hyde of the national travel association AAA. It's a small number compared with the millions of GPS units in service, she said.

 

Given the number of GPS users out there it is a good sign that these sorts of events are still rare enough that they are considered newsworthy enough to report on.

But, he said, it isn't as if people have just started getting lost in the woods. "In yesteryear, it was people not knowing how to read their maps," he said.

 

A very good point. While it is fun to poke at the technology, people have always been getting lost on backroads.

Pack a survival kit for the winter. Configure your GPS for "highways only," or a similar setting, so that you don't get directed to byways in the winter. Top off your gasoline tank, and charge your cell phone batteries before going into remote areas. Pay attention to the weather.

 

All too often when people tell me stories about how "stupid" their GPS is, I look at the unit and find that it is programmed for shortest route and they do not have proper avoidances selected. A little more time spent looking at the options on the unit and a little less thinking of GPS as a panacea would go a long way. Maybe the manufacturers need to start changing the default settings of these units so they come from the factory in a way that keeps them on more major roads.

 

And, as well, no one should be traveling on the roads without some basic survival gear, especially in the winter climates.

[+TheAlabamaRambler]

My GPS (Garmin 60CSx and Blackberry Curve 8310) lead me astray quite regularly, especially in remote areas.

 

I've had it lead me off the Interstate onto smaller and smaller roads that eventually petered out into goat trails! I've had it lead me to within a half-mile of a cache where the road simply quit, at which point you realize that while you are close to the cache you can't get there from here and that the real park entrance is on the other side, 30 miles away by road!

 

And, at some point you just know that you're being led on a fool's mission but you think "Well, we've gotta get back on a main road sometime!"

 

I had this happen not long ago, not geocaching but while volunteering as a radio operator at a safety checkpoint for a 100-mile footrace through the Talladega National Forest trails. My checkpoint was way out in the woods, with unmarked turns on maybe seven different forest service roads. My GPS got me turned around both going in at dark and coming out the next morning! If not for being able to radio race control for directions I would not have found the checkpoint nor my way out. Since I had gone in in the dark nothing looked the same in the morning... I'd get on a road and think "Ha! I was here last night!" then in a few miles think "No, I have never seen this road before, I would have remembered this creek crossing... turn around (again!)"

 

The thing is that the GPS will get you there a vast majority of the time, so I get to believing that it must know where its going and follow it until its proven itself to be lying to me! It was maybe 5 miles from the main road to the checkpoint but both in and out I drove for an hour, cursing myself for not having paper maps or having printed out the directions, before admitting I had no clue where I was and calling for directions!

 

Yeah, I can relate to some of the folks who let the GPS lead them astray.

 

As an aside, the winner did the 100 mile footrace over rough forest trails, running all night with just a headlamp, in 15 hours 21 minutes... amazing! And they think geocaching is just as weird as I do running! It'd take a mighty mean bear, with a gun, to make me run 100 miles through the forest!!

Edited January 3, 2010 by TheAlabamaRambler