Slashdot Mirror
Satellite Navigation a Real Crackpot!
debest writes "What happens when your satellite navigation system in your car gives you bad advice on which road you should take? In Britain, these systems have been directing drivers down a road near the (aptly named) town of Crackpot that is strewn with boulders and has an unprotected 100ft dropoff on one side! The locals are worried someone's going to go off the edge."
Treat it for depression, give it plenty of (if its voice command) encouraging words or (if its tap-n-go) a good rub, but be sure to keep an eye on it; its obviously has suicidal tendancies.
Demented But Determined.
Is why are the british drivers punching in "crackpot" as their destination? Agreed that GPS Nav works like magic, but this is too much optimism. What did they expect, a list of all local crack joints with directions?
""What happens when your satellite navigation system in your car gives you bad advice on which road you should take?"
Not much different than that gas station attendant five miles back.
Come on, if back in the early 1980s you could get a sentient talking car, then why in 2006 do we settle for these simple guidance systems that are so limited they could get us killed?
1) Put up a sign reading "Don't go down this road, even if your GPS tells you to; Dangerous conditions ahead".
2) Stabilize the slope above and install a guard rail.
Hey now, come on, this story is cute and funny in a safely humorous, non-tech way. I don't know about you, but I want to know about every navigation bug affecting rural UK folk. Just what I expect here at /. Boy oh boy, let me tell you about the time Yahoo! Maps told me to take the I405 instead of I5 to go to South Seattle from Lynnwood. FRONT PAGE NEWS!
A B A C A B B
Is there a reason that they haven't put a railing on the "unprotected 100ft dropoff" edge?
...put up a sign "Toll Road Ahead".
I had a similar problem recently while driving through Pennsylvania. I had set my car's GPS computer to lead me to Intercourse, but no matter what I pushed it I could only reach Bird in Hand. Of course, I've had this problem with web pages on my PC at home before, so I really can't blame the mapping company.
In Crackpot there's more than one way to go off the deep end! /rimshot
There are a couple of problems with these things, both familiar to MapQuest users.
...
1) Things change. New roads (sometimes whole communities) get built, and there is some latency in getting that updated data where it can be used by your GPS-mapper (whether in your car or on the web).
2) Driving-direction algorithims are good, but not flawless. MapQuest, for example, provides driving directions that will usually get you where you want to go, but may have you take an odd route to get there.
The bottom line: If you expect your Tom-Tom (or whatever) to magically do all of your thinking for you, you'll eventually wind up going over an 'unexpected' cliff
If a computer tells you to jump off a cliff, would you do it?
"Don't drive there! The road ends on a cliff and we'll all fall off and die horribly!" "But the GPS directions say to go that way!" "Oh, in that case, no problem. "
Some time back when GPS's in cars were fairly new, I rented a Hertz car with a GPS while on a business trip to Colorado. I didn't ask for the GPS, they just gave it to me. At the end of my trip I decided to try out the GPS, so I programmed it to return me to the Colorado Springs airport. I missed the first turn to the airport but no problem, the GPS said it had an alternate route. So I followed the route until it said I had reached my destination. All I could see however was miles of nothing and a big chain link fence. The GPS insisted I was at the airport however. Finally I dug out the rental car map and it showed me that the GPS had led me to the back side of the airport. I almost missed my flight because of that stupid GPS.
>I had set my car's GPS computer to lead me to Intercourse
maybe you should try match.com, I hear that works pretty well. It must be better than your gps, at least.
This adspace for sale! Inquire within!
I have a Garmin Quest.
The locals are so worried about this. Just like, in the days of sailing ships, the villagers who put up fake lights were very worried that some ship might run aground on the rocks. I say we see who in this village is hacking the GPS. First place to look...the suspiciously wellstocked local secondhand store.
I knew I should've bought a squirrel
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
I say buy the parcel of land at the bottom of the 100ft dropoff and set up an auto wrecking yard. Put up sign half way down - "Welcome to Crackpot Auto Wrecking"
This is fairly local to me. This is out in the wilds where the decent A road takes the long way round. The problem seems to be that untarmaced roads are set to about 10mph average spped by default in a lot of routing software, and most people select 'fastest route'. Simply by setting untarmaced roads to 1mph you can avoid some of this silly routing. Plus using a bit of common sense.
In Soviet Crackpot, GPS drives you!
"I'm a Laver, not a Phyto[plankton]"
One of the things I enjoy about my GPS is that it sometimes takes me on rocky, dangerous, fall-off-a-cliff dirt roads that I'd otherwise never find!
Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.
Incidently the name comes from the norse "pot" meaning hole or dip (in this case referring to the limestone rift there) and "Kraka" meaning crow. As a kid I was always told it was because they found some roman coins in a cracked pot there but I think the former is more plausible!
Anyway it was great to see Crackpot on Slashdot. I suppose next week they'll be a story about the nearby town of Hawes (which is pronounced "whores" :-)
A looong time ago in Seatle I managed to get some similar system.
Hertz or herts or something car rental came with a navigation system.
I thought, well this is nifty and set about setting up my destination.
It was a bit of a pain initially and I was really annoyed I didn't have more time to spend truly learning it before I actually went somewhere. Still, I pressed onward with this great technological advancement and started on my way.
I swear the damn thing tried to kill me repeatedly.
Wrong street here, one way there or just it generally shouting at me that I was going the wrong way.
I was still fairly impressed that it managed to re-calculate the route, but I gave up on it after the second time it sent me down the wrong way on a one way street.
It ended up being useful to get me close to my destination, but just wasn't responsive enough for my needs.
I'm sure it is much better now though.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
I guess it's that pale-white track on the bottom left, just below the "Summer Lodge [Farm]" that was mentioned in the article, in which case no GPS system should take you down one of those - white on British OS maps (as opposed to yellow) means no tarmac. And the dotted edges of the road indeed mean "unfenced". Lovely stuff. It's even debatable whether the narrow yellow roads on that map (which mean single-track with passing places) should be used by a GPS as through routes, let alone the white ones!
Still, it reinforces the stupidity of the drivers, as there's obviously a point there, just past the farm, where the character of the road changes, and they blindly believe the GPS rather than turn back and let it find another route.
I believe this is why most GPS in car nav systems have a click through disclaimer every time it starts saying that while these are valid directiosn they are not necessarily the best/fastest/safest way from A -> B and that you use them at your own peril.
This is what happens when people rely too much on nifty gadgets and stop using basic skills like map reading. The map may sill take you down this road but from what I've seen people get all googlyeyed in front of any video display and lose basic reasoning skill, like that which would prompt somoene to fidgit with the GPS for a minute and find an alternate route as this one seems undrivable.
City: Silent Hill, Toluca County, West Virginia.
Hey, what's that cliff doing in the middle of the roaaAAAAAAAAAAAAA
I have owned a Magellen Roadmate 760 for six months. Living in Chicagoland for 28 years I find my GPS makes days out more flexible; any new place we wish to go is its command. In the past, going from one area to another would include at least a slght bit of driving towards home till we found a street we know takes us to the new area. With GPS it is almost like a wormhole, as soon after you leave your starting point you are in unfamiliar territory and then sooner than you would think you pop out at your destination. I have learned more about what this area has to offer.
Oh, and should someone give you it as a gift, you can translate their generosity into the words, "Go get lost!"
/.'s Psychic-in-Residence: Psychic to the Geeks
And you think this is somehow a new thing? People rarely question authority figures. Witness the Milgram Experiment which found that 65% of people will inflict fatal electric shocks as punishment when told to do so by an authority figure. That's right, 65% of us are Lyndie England wannabes, given the right circumstances. People are very malleable and easy to lead.
Computers take this to a new level of (misguided) trust.