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'Death By GPS' Increasing In America's Wilderness
An anonymous reader writes "Every year, more and more Americans are dying in deserts and wildernesses because they rely on their GPS units (and, to some degree, their cellphones) to always be accurate. The Sacramento Bee quotes Death Valley wilderness coordinator Charlie Callagan: 'It's what I'm beginning to call death by GPS ... People are renting vehicles with GPS and they have no idea how it works and they are willing to trust the GPS to lead them into the middle of nowhere.'"
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Now, the real question was actually even how he got as far as he did. He'd had to go up and down and around for a couple miles of almost-that-bad road to get where he got stuck in a place utterly obvious a tractor couldn't go -- it was longer and straighter than the distance between two hairpins near the bottom of that hill, and driving skill at that point made no difference. I'd have to suppose this guy didn't realize that it was pointless, and that even an hour of carefully backing up the way he came would be a better plan -- there is no place to turn one of these.
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What is truly hilarious is that he would only have saved two miles (out of 10-15) doing this over simply using the main, paved roads -- this was a "shortcut", and the way no one goes who knows the roads here -- too hard on the vehicle to be worth saving the miles, and you save no gas at all.
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So yeah, it took both driver ignorance AND a lousy GPS to get there, but it seems both were willin'.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
I tried reading the article, the screwed up page with all it's toolbars, ads and such kept refreshing after a few seconds and jumping to the top of the page. I was interested enough to go to the printer-friendly link an be able to finish the article.
It's unfortunate that the article and summary talk about "inaccurate GPS" while giving examples of inaccurate or for the most part imprecise databases. It sounded like someone getting lost and blaming the compass when it was the tourist map from the gift shop that was at fault.
Just checked to make sure, the 8 year old Garmin in my car has the option "avoid unpaved roads" as I don't have a 4x4 I have that option checked. If I wanted to go 4-wheeling I guess I could let it route me on those.
Idiots who drive for miles in the desert on a gravel road when they are ill-prepared for it are no different than the ones who drive off the pier when their Nav unit was trying to lead them to the ferry. There's always going to be idiots, now they're just ganging up to blame their gadget for their problems.
All of the Garmin Nuvi GPS units I have had have a warning screen that shows every single time that it is turned on saying this.
This probably is more a feature of people liking to be getting orders, even when those orders are wrong.
Not to say that I am immune. I have found my self going down roads where if my GPS quit I would only have a vague idea of how to get home from that location.
You seem to be confusing real dashboard GPS units with cellphones.
They are far from the same. A typical Dashboard GPS has all the maps onboard.
They also offers route defaults that favor major roads (shortest time), and these never lead you into trouble other than temporary weather or construction delays. Maps may become obsolete over several years. Roads just don't change that frequently.
And these dashboard units are seldom ever "Wrong" as to your location, and don't rely on any cellular signals. There are the occasional blind spots (city canyons), but these are temporary. If you go thru a tunnel you may lose signals, but the better GPS units realize this, and realize you really can't get lost in a tunnel, and simply revert to estimation till you emerge from the tunnel.
As for wide open desert spaces, the dashboard GPS units don't fail. Common sense fails.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Actually Mr. Kim's death had nothing to do with GPS. According to Mrs. Kim, they planned their route using a paper map and didn't see the note stating "Not all Roads Advisable, Check Weather Conditions." They also passed three prominent warning signs that state: "Bear Camp Rd. May Be Blocked By Snowdrifts."
Actually, no, Kim would probably have been better off with a GPS. They used a paper map, not a GPS. Not only that, they used a highway map, which are piss-poor at covering back roads, yet they chose to use back roads anyway.
More importantly, it was misreading of that map that led them down a hunting road and eventually got them stuck. The side road they selected to avoid going to a higher elevation was, in fact, a dead-end, and any half-assed GPS would have told them that. The problem was they didn't know exactly where they were, and their highway map probably didn't cover the area in sufficient detail even if they did. They took a road that looked like it stayed at a lower elevation.
Even more critical was Kim's misreading of the map that convinced him that a town was 4 miles away. Even the piss-poorest of GPS units would given him better information. Of course, leaving the car with inadequate gear to keep him warm was a bad idea, too, but given the situation he was in, probably the best he could do. I think I would have ripped up a car seat or two for the foam insulation, though...
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
That's a bad assumption. Distance signs on the interstate highways give three distances: the distance to the next exit (not always an inhabited location), the distance to the inhabited location after that, and the distance to the next major city. For example (numbers are approximate):
Racetrack: 7
Warm Springs: 13
Butte: 75
Racetrack is two buildings beside the road, Warm Springs isn't much bigger; Butte is a small city. You won't see "Anaconda: 17" until you pass Racetrack, but Anaconda is a town big enough to support an airport, a hospital, and several gas stations.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.