Slashdot Mirror
National Park Service Says Tech Is Enabling Stupidity
theodp writes "The National Park Service is finding technology to be a double-edged sword. While new technologies can and do save lives, the NPS is also finding that unseasoned hikers and campers are now boldly going where they never would have gone before, counting on cellphones, GPS, and SPOT devices to bail them out if they get into trouble. Last fall, a group of hikers in the Grand Canyon called in rescue helicopters three times by pressing the emergency button on their satellite location device. When rangers arrived the second time, the hikers complained that their water supply tasted salty. 'Because of having that electronic device, people have an expectation that they can do something stupid and be rescued,' said a spokeswoman for Grand Teton National Park. 'Every once in a while we get a call from someone who has gone to the top of a peak, the weather has turned and they are confused about how to get down and they want someone to personally escort them. The answer is that you are up there for the night.'"
A bill for a helicopter may not cure stupidity, but it will reduce its ability to afford to go there the next year.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I really don't get articles like this; of course tech can provide some new versions of the same old store; but the fundamentals still hold true - some people are just going to go through life stupidly, trusting that someone else will bail them out. You want an answer; hold them accountable for their actions. For the idjits with the Salty Water; fine them the Rangers time, the fuel in the vehicles, plus a 10K punitive fine.
Start charging a fee for services. Set the rates make sure they are known in advance. Outsource to a private company to provide the service (can't have emergency personnel tied up on a catering run). Done and done
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
This is not a new problem. In the area I live, there are plenty of mountains that, while looking outwardly benign, kill a number of people (experienced or not) each year. Because of their proximity to a number of major cities, relatively short hikes to the summit (day trips), and extremely changeable weather (70 F and sunny to zero visibility, freezing temperatures, and gale-force winds in an hour), lots of inexperienced hikers get way in over their heads.
Their recourse? Not to plan carefully and accordingly. Not to travel with more experienced and better-equipped friends or guides. Not to heed the signs at treeline warning of the numerous weather-related dangers. Not to stick to less dangerous ascents in the region. Not to bag it when the weather turns sour. Nope, just whip out the cellphone and call in a rescue.
It's one thing if you take a fall due to dumb luck, it's another thing to get soaked, freezing, and lost due to, well, being dumb.
It did get bad enough that the state legislature passed a law a number of years back that, if you need rescue because you were stupid or inadequately prepared for the hike, you can get charged for the rescue costs. This is typically upwards of a few tens out thousands of dollars.
The leader was issued a citation for creating hazardous conditions in the parks.
Also, your reasoning that this is the 'same old story' doesn't work when this evidence is presented to you
The group’s leader had hiked the Grand Canyon once before, but the other man had little backpacking experience. Rangers reported that the leader told them that without the device, "we would have never attempted this hike."
Emphasis mine. If the National Park Service claims this is increasing their encounters with such idiots then this isn't the 'same old story.' As technology is further exacerbating the age old idiot complex.
My work here is dung.
A lot of these devices seem to prevent planning in general, even for little things. If you had to look up an address and stare at a map ahead of time to know where you were going, then you'd think of other things in the process. Now you can just hop in your car, type what you want in to your phone (e.g. bike shop), and follow its directions. Maybe you'll end up where you want, but people who do that often seem to be unprepared. And I've seen people doing that get lost in the process -- those directions aren't perfect, and if you don't have some general idea of where you're going, its still easy to make wrong turns. (Dedicated GPS devices are better, but not perfect, and I've heard that their sales are down due to smartphones).
Of course, it's not like in the old days everyone planned ahead and knew where they were and where they were going at all times. My family was big on planning routes, always having maps, and knowing how to read them. This is clearly not the case for many people I have met. I still think technology isn't helping.
I was going to write a clever response to this article, but I'm having too much trouble finding the Slashdot automatic clever response generator. Can you guys send over someone from tech support to help me?
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish"
Albert Einstein
Ten years ago when I was hiking in Glacier National Park, we heard a whistle. Now back then a whistle was something you used to summon help. My friend and I hurried down the trail looking for whoever was in trouble. It turned out it was a stupid lady with her two small children making sure that the bears were scared away. Nothing has really changed with people, their whistle can just be heard at even greater distances. Park rangers have the ability to issue tickets for this sort of behavior, no reason they shouldn't.
Have them insure it.
No doctor could afford the potential millions of a malpractice claim, so they are practically required to get insurance, and the climbing/hiking issue can be handled the same way. Some mountain ranges (if I remember correctly, including Everest) do practice this already.
One simple solution is to make it clear that if you activate an emergency beacon or request 911 assistance, you _WILL_ be taken back to park facilities. If you read TFA, you'll see that most of the complaints are regarding people requesting guides or supplies, but not wanting to cut their trip short. (The other accounts are of morons with digital cameras, who are no different than morons with film cameras, and seem to be used simply to fill out the article.)
In short, one rescue per trip. You can go out, but if we need to come get you, you can't go out again. (Exceptions could be made for animal attacks or physical injuries.)
no matter how insignificant the event called it was.
This is a classic "Boy who cried wolf" problem. During an emergency, responders need to take calls seriously unless there is overwhelming evidence that the call is a prank. After the second time the Grand Canyon SatPhone hikers pushed their emergency button, I think they ought to be put in the "sorry, you're on your own from here on out" category, giving bears uninterrupted access to eat their faces.
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so. - Douglas Adams (1952-2001)
load "$",8,1
"Enabling" in this context means to allow and passively encourage, by removing obstacles and trying to compensate for it. It's like "enabling an alcoholic" by making excuses for them, calling in sick for them, cleaning up their puke for them, etc. "Enabling stupidity" doesn't mean "making people stupid".
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Here's another idea. Permit anyone to go up the mountain, but don't provide them rescue services if they don't get the insurance first. I'm tired of all this protecting people from themselves, crap. Let's just protect society from people. Meanwhile, preventing poor people from hiking is not a good solution. Those mountains belong to everyone... and carrion eaters need food, too. Won't someone think of the animals?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Thereby ensuring that only those who can afford this kind of small-pool high-risk insurance are permitted to use the parks. Not an idea I can get behind.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
And thus the American frontier was closed forever. Having a family gathering in park just outside of town that happens to be wooded and have a small lake? $450 for six hours of indemnity covering no more than twelve people. Cant pay it? Stay out of the park.
The National Parks are America's greatest natural treasures, but they come with the downside of the unpredictability of nature and the inherent hazards thereof. Regulate medicine, regulate markets, but let wilderness be wilderness. Park Rangers should hand out copies of Nash's "Wilderness and the American Mind" the way Gideons hand out the Bible to hotels.
http://www.aaronrogier.net
We rescue these morons.
Honestly, Evolution is getting reversed because we save the "stupid" from getting killed. The news covers the death of a moron as "a tragedy" instead of , "and there's at least another idiot we dont have to deal with anymore"
Our society encourages Stupidity because the risk of death is reduced or removed. Let these idiots die, leave their bodies there as a warning to others.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
No. Stupidity enables Stupidity.
blaming tech for stupid people doing stupid things is well......stupid
When I was in Boy Scouts as a kid, we had to learn to read topographical maps and use a compass. Maybe we had a cell phone, maybe not. hand-held GPS was kind of expensive and not particularly advanced. Besides, GPS needs batteries and adds weight.
Hiking with a map and compass and no "please, come get me!" beacon is like programming in C or Assembler. You're closer to the metal and have to have a deeper understanding of what you're actually doing. Going out with GPS is like jumping right in with a language like Ruby which makes things really easy at first... until the first time you forget to properly define a base case for a recursive function and hit a stack error message.
The tools are great, but are always going to work way better for people who understand the basic principles of what's being automated for them, and have some "old school" experience to fall back on when necessary. Easy tools that take all the hard work out of a lot of necessary tasks lead to a false sense of security.
As with programming, where high-level, dynamic languages make it much easier for people who might otherwise not take the time to learn to program do so, going "here's a GPS... and this rescue beacon!" encourages people who probably don't really want to learn how to tie proper knots go out in the woods, get themselves in way over their head, and then basically hit that stack error. But, never having had to address memory by hand, they don't really know what that means or what to do about it.
I go hiking fairly regularly, and I don't even own any of that stuff. You can get USGS topo quads easily enough, and a good compass. Sturdy boots, balanced pack, and my leatherman. Carry enough water and some spare granola bars in case I get out farther than I had really planned. If I'm in the woods, its 'cause I don't want to be attached to the computer anymore. But maybe thats because I work surrounded by them all day.
The $450 came out of my ass. The problem is the holy grail of "Marginal cost = Marginal Revenue" that every student of economics is taught to chase. Unfortunately such equilibrium as well as the cool graphs seldom exist in real markets with the Kantian level of absolutism in which the texts lionize them. The other problem is the aversion generally felt to allowing preventable deaths to occur. As a result agencies have to navigate a fussy middle ground, and market solutions often fail in problems constructed outside of specific market friendly environments.
The best solution to this problem would involve education, but considering as an American my nation's failings decades after the assassination of Martin Luther King to provide equality of opportunity to primary and secondary education the only reasonable solution to wilderness stupidity is to continue to allow people to dare to be stupid while offering compassionate and occasionally billable solutions to consequences of stupidity..
http://www.aaronrogier.net
Cheaper an even more profitable idea is to publish all the stupid people rescue stories. If a person is rescued from their own stupidity they give up any rights to profits made from their story on the mountain or whatever and the park services can rake in the dough. Name and shame them on a TV show and/or YouTube. This will have the added effect of educating the public to be less stupid as well since the entertainment can also be edutainment at the same time.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
deep into isolated territory
The problem is that it doesn't seem like deep isolated territory, and it doesn't have to be to get into serious trouble. There's a lot of places where you might park your car at a bustling parking lot filled with civilization and plan a day hike, back by 5pm, but instead find yourself alone and freezing on the peak as weather has shifted and visibility has dropped.
I saw this prominently in Rickets Glenn in PA a couple weeks ago. There's a very short but lovely day hike up and down about 14 waterfalls in a bustling park. Lots of amenities in the parking lots and park proper and lots of people. No Cell phone reception on the trail though, and while extremely well maintained it's still very steep ascents and descents around the waterfalls. I ran into one extremely overweight woman about halfway through the trip that was sweating and throwing up because she had a heart condition and left her nitro in the car. There was no Earthly reason a woman like this should be hiking, but with the amenities and easy access she probably thought she was going for a short walk through the park to check out some waterfalls.
As if that wasn't bad enough, this same trip we ran across a dude that fell 20-30 feet off the trail landing on rocks at the base of the falls cracking his head open. There was a nurse and PT to work on him but I had to run the trail for about a mile before I could find someone with cell reception and put in the call. These are crowded trails, but because of the masquerade of civilization no one else was carrying a first aid kit. Took about an hour for the Park ranger to respond with a med bag and the helicopter a little later. I'm guessing he made it, he had lost a bit of blood but had regained consciousness and they were trying to keep him calm and talking while waiting by the time I peaced out, but my point is that these people don't think their in the deep woods or isolated territory because of how convenient we've made park access.
People just don't get that when you walk off the road for 15 minutes you are isolated and better have everything you need for whatever that area can throw at you. And it's not something that's intuitive, because these areas don't look isolated, and they don't feel dangerous. It's like a sunny calm day on the ocean, everything's real peachy till it ain't.
It sort of works that way now. The problem is in an emergency, they will try to rescue someone and minutes and seconds can matter... They can't check to see if waivers were signed, they can't check bank accounts to see if the funds are ready, they have to go save somebody. It's not unusual to spend $250k rescuing someone and then you find out that it's not recoverable or you can only get $50k back and they are financially ruined and possibly left with a substantial and long lasting injury which possibly prevents them from making more money. What do you do then?
About 20 years ago I went backpacking in Alaska and took a couple training classes prior and one bear class was particularly effective, they showed gory actual footage of what bears do, you can't out run them, you can't fight them, it's simple: avoid conflict with them or you will most likely die and they will eat you. It was awesome in a way, it drilled the point home, made it clear, everyone in our group new better than to get near bears.. Education is key. Maybe they shouldn't let you loose in Yellowstone without a 45 minute seminar or something, people wouldn't like it but it would help. You could put it in the public schools, city folks will have a harder time with it, say it's a waste of time...
The other thing that's worth raising is that the costs of these rescues isn't reflective of the actual cost that often. In Colorado a lot of the mountain rescue groups are staffed mostly with volunteers, it's actually a pretty elite thing to be part of, they usually have more people wanting to be involved than they need and they attract some of the best because the volunteers want to be recognized as being that good. They aren't paying professional climbers do rescue people. Helicopter fuel and ambulance trips aren't that expensive either.. It's partially a side effect of how the accounting works. They have "rescue and emergency" budgets which are under funded they divide the annual budget up by the rescues performed and then they account of the under funding and end up with a figure like $250k for 50 volunteers, 10 paid professionals and 8 hours of helicopter fuel (and then a crap ton of media coverage...) It makes for better news and you can victimize the victim when they did it to themselves which is probably more often than not by saying we spent half a million dollars saving some idiot.
I am 50ish and pilot. I learned to fly when I was 17 flew for a bit (10 years ish), then had a family. I then decided to return to flying. I went back for some more training. The differences.
1st time: My instructor was an OLD WWII vet. A mean cuss that ALWAYS was trying to get me lost. I live in Central Alberta where land marks are few, its flat, and water lines can vary greatly from the charts. We used a map covered in wax paper, a pencil with 1" marks cut in to it and a watch. I never did get lost.
2nd time (25 yrs later): Modern aircraft, Cessna 172 instead of the 1947 fleet canuck. GPS as well as compass. Instruct must have been all of 6 or 7 (really about 25ish). Nice young kid, good skilled pilot. We went up for a refresher check out flight. Did a stall, spin, slow flight etc. (Oh yeah, he did smile at my knee board with the wax paper and pencil). At the end of the flight he said lets head for home and I banked the aircraft while he punched in the coords on the GPS. By the time he was done, I was already on the heading. He was mildly impressed.
We went for coffee and discussed the differences in our training. We both admitted that I could use some more training using the GPS. However he offered his time in trade get some more experience with my flight computer (plastic slide rule for headings and wind for the non pilots) and knee board. He recognized that if he ever did loose his GPS for what ever reason, a manual system might be good to know.
I look at all of the technology available to today's hikers, boaters (I have my skippers papers too), and pilots that forget about the mark I computer sitting on our shoulders. It provides a false sense of security. Everything is fine in the perfect scenario, but for many of these adventures, emergencies arise, not because of a real act of god but a lack of planning. When diving we say "Plan the dive, dive the plan". This should be applied to all "adventures" but we live in a society where the quick adventure is what we are after and fewer a learning how to plan and be prepared. We are quick to pass on the responsibility to technology or experts, knowing that we can sue if they fail.
The only answer I can see is passing on the expenses of rescues to the rescuees. Legit or otherwise. Might be a good thing to take out adventure insurance... The more training you have, the less the insurance would be...
Actually, the NPS has dealt with this before. A lot. For a series of examples of REALLY stupid people, go check out Death in Yellowstone. Here's the oblig Amazon link:
http://www.amazon.com/Death-Yellowstone-Accidents-Foolhardiness-National/dp/1570980217
My wife picked this up when we were there on our Honeymoon (there, Grand Teton, and RMNP). There are countless examples of reeeeeally stupid people. The lady who fed a black bear and got her t*ts ripped off when the bear used her as an accidental scratching post? Check. The guy who jumped into the boiling hot geothermal pool to save his dog and his skin fell off after he got out? Check. The countless people who go hiking through grizzly country, forget to wear bear bells, don't take pepper spray with them, don't walk and talk loudly with a partner, and keep their smelly food in an unsealed cooler inside their tent not only get themselves et, but get bears killed too, whose only crime was responding to instinct (okay, okay... there are plenty of examples of bears gone wild who attacked when people did everything right, and just have to be put down).
Accidents happen, and the tech is there for a reason. There are also plenty of cases where natural selection does its job. The NPS isn't going to stop every case of natural selection, simply because it can't. They'll try, because the park rangers do NOT want anyone to die on their watch. They deal with stupidity a lot, but they're not going to let someone die just because they didn't know what they were doing. It's exasperating to them, I'm sure, but they are dedicated to saving lives and preventing injuries.
I see a lot of knee jerk responses about charging EVERYONE for using emergency services or making it some type of crime to be calling emergency services.
We all pay for the park service to be alert in case something goes wrong. It's their job to provide help. Just, because some people abuse the service, doesn't mean you should mess it up for everyone.
It doesn't matter what technology you provide or don't provide, stupid people will do stupid things and end up being a cost to society. If we didn't have SPOT, someone idiot will bring flares and "accidentally" set a forest fire while signaling for help. You simply have to allocate for stupidity. If you try to make the world idiot proof, then we'll all be living in misery.
Here in Arizona, there is no fee to those that we rescue. We're all volunteers with the exception of DPS Ranger. SPOT beacons have saved several people's lives in the last couple of years. The first in the county was a guy who slipped off the edge of a steep trail and broke both ankles. Luke AFB got the first ping in 45 minutes. That's a damn sight better than waiting an unknown number of hours before someone notices that the subject is missing. Cellphones also help us direct ground units to the subject. That being said, SAR teams do not rescue peoples' vehicles and we have gotten into shouting matches with people from Phoenix who got stuck in the snow and are stunned that we will take them to safety but they're going to have to arrange for a paid tow service to get their vehicle out.
That being said, the NPS is somewhat hypocritical about things. First off, in Yellowstone, there is no cellphone service in most of the park despite what the movie 2012 would have you believe. Second, I have witnessed the ancient diesel noisy belching shuttle buses at the Grand Canyon blow right past people on the side of the road who may be injured or in trouble simply because they weren't standing at a designated pick up point.
Furthermore, technology isn't the only thing that can get people into trouble. The US Forest Service often doesn't maintain roads that appear on published maps and GPS databases as good roads so people end up in trouble. And then there are the outdoor magazines. We had a rescue here of a man who read an article that said you should hike up one trail and bushwhack over to another trail to come out. Really really bad idea if you don't know what you're doing.
I'm a long time back country camper and hiker (meaning I carry my own tent/bag etc on my back). One of my favorite routes in Yosemite is to take a route in which I camp at the base of halfdome and then finish in the valley. The best part is that I don't encounter the crowds until I'm 75% done.
The last 25% is along the main tail between half-dome and the valley. This passes by the major water falls which people do a simple day hike to. While most people doing a day hike to half dome start at dark, I've seen more than my share of "dumb hikers" who are dressed in jeans/doc martins/sneakers or other non-hiking apparel and in their hand was a bottle of water (the kind you get for a few bucks at the supermarket, not a camelbak and ample supplies). I think they only see the pictures of the cables and forget that it's 14miles miles round trip and 5k feet of elevation gain.
I've had more than one occasion where some unprepared day hiker has asked me for water/food/help. I had one woman ask me for water and I when I told her that the water that I had in my camelbak was filtered (I have a portable pump/filter) from a local stream, she refused to take it.
I agree with the article, GPS and electronics haven't made people more stupid, the devices have enabled more stupid people to do things whereby they are critically dependent on the device. I never hike without a paper map. Why? Maps don't need batteries, and still work when wet and dirty.
On a side note, people that leave food in their cars in Yosemite should not only be fined, but they themselves should be fed to the bears.