'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.'"

Comments

Please take responsibility for your life.

[Frosty Piss]

Come on, folks, you're traveling between Portland OR and Las Vegas NV, and your GPS says the most direct route is over some gravel Forest Service road in the Eastern Oregon mountains... In the winter... You take it? Really?

Your GPS takes you down some deserted desert road that peters away into sand in the mifddle of Death Valley... Really?

There's not much you can do about MORONS, one way or another, they may kill themselves.

Re:Please take responsibility for your life.

[corsec67]

their manufacturers don't tend to advertise their capabilities as "may be wrong"

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.

Re:Please take responsibility for your life.

[ColdWetDog]

Plain ol maps don't tell you they 'may be wrong' either. It comes with the territory. No matter what you are using for a guide - maps, mystic revelations, signs from God - you still still have to look out the windshield and think occasionally. In the Olden Days when I did Search and Rescue in Colorado we didn't have GPS. We had maps. And we ended up pulling out idiots from all sorts of places because the 'map told them' they could get from one abandoned mining town to another over a 13000 foot pass in a Volkswagen.

And your second wish has been granted. There are a number of iPhone apps which do allow you to download maps before you head out. Very classy. Garmin ought to be scared - the iPhone is a hell of a lot better GPS than my Oregon 400: better display, better GPS chip, better battery life (really!). The only advantage that the Garmin has is that it's completely waterproof and I can carry a passle of AA batteries with me.

Re:Please take responsibility for your life.

[plover]

A bigger problem over here in old blighty is articulated lorries getting stuck by driving down roads that are too narrow or otherwise unsuitable. One big problem in this case is it's virtually impossible to turn a lorry on a narrow road. So if the road starts looking bad the choices are to carry on and hope they don't get stuck, try to reverse out (very slow and likely to require a second person) or tow the lorry out.

In America, there are GPS maps created by commercial services for sale to the trucking industry. These maps include weight restrictions, width and height restrictions, truck routes, diesel fuel truck stops, tire and service centers, all kinds of information that is specific to the driving of big rigs. I would assume you have similar services available over there. But if your ordinary trucker thinks he can just drop a $99 Garmin on his dashboard and use it to drag a 30 tonne trailer to wherever he wants, well, that's almost as foolish as trying to cross two hundred miles of desert because there's a little blue line on the screen.

Re:Please take responsibility for your life.

[Shadow Wrought]

There's not much you can do about MORONS, one way or another, they may kill themselves.

Nature has been killing the ill-prepared for as long as there have been humans. Why do you think her opposite is called Nurture?

Re:Please take responsibility for your life.

[Swampash]

The Kims didn't use a GPS, they used a paper map.

Re:Please take responsibility for your life.

[icebike]

their manufacturers don't tend to advertise their capabilities as "may be wrong"

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.

Re:Please take responsibility for your life.

[khallow]

And that's different from any other breakdown exactly how?

GPS reduces some of the consequences of doing things in the outdoors, so people engage in riskier behavior than they otherwise would. It's called "moral hazard".

For example, I can use GPS to navigate to almost anywhere in the US, including some places that almost never see people. To flesh out the example a little more, I've worked the last couple of summers in Yellowstone. There are some interesting places there that don't have trails going to them. A GPS can lead the dumbest tourist several miles away from any people. And as long as things go well, it can lead them back.

The problem is when things don't go well. The top three things are breaking or losing the only GPS they had, getting hurt, and getting bad weather or staying till after dark. In the first case, too often there's no backup plan, if the GPS stops working. Nobody made even a basic effort to memorize landmarks or bring a map.

Second, if you break something, get a bad case of diarrhea from the local parasites, or come down with an altitude/exertion related medical condition (way too common in high altitude areas), then it's possible for you to end up in a situation where either your group has to split up (and there's only one GPS to go around) or if you were soloing, you get to stay put for a few days and hope someone finds you in the middle of nowhere before you die.

And bad weather can kill the unprepared fast even if they know exactly where they are. Cross country hiking can be much slower especially in low visibility weather than hiking on a trail (even worse it can be highly variable, if you accidentally run into dense vegetation or rocky terrain that you bypassed on the way in). And I always carry a flashlight (with batteries that can last a full night) just in case I don't make it back before dark.

Sure, dumb people can get into major trouble, just following regular trails. But GPS allows them to get into trouble in the middle of nowhere, where nobody would think of looking for them, making any bad situation more lethal. GPS doesn't help as much to get them out of trouble. Hence, the problem.

Re:Please take responsibility for your life.

[natehoy]

I don't know where you heard that, but it's not "apparent" at all. Sorry, but it's simply not true.

aGPS is only dependent on cell towers for the initial GPS lock, and only speeds up that lock from the traditional GPS approach by using approximate location data. aGPS without cell tower = GPS. The GPS radio itself is not dependent in any way on the cell radio.

When any GPS receiver first starts up, it needs to know what satellites to look for. Not all birds are visible from all locations. Traditional GPS just picks a handful of common and evenly-scattered satellite frequencies and starts listening until it gets its first lock. Then it starts listening for satellites that are known to be close to the one it found. When it has 3-4 of them, it has a good idea of where it is and can narrow down the rest and start giving you decent accuracy. This process takes time (in some old GPS units, several minutes).

On my old Magellan Meridian, it would actually ask you what state you were in at start-up to help narrow down the search, and accurately identifying your state could cut 1-2 minutes off start-up (without this initial hint, it could take up to 5 minutes to get a "first lock" even with a clear view of the sky). So that was an example of early "assisted GPS", where I was the "assist" mechanism.

What's even worse is when your GPS tries to remember where it was, and you've moved somewhere else while the GPS receiver was powered off. Once, on a trip from Maine to Texas, I powered down my Meridian in Maine before boarding the plane, then fired it up in Texas and it took nearly 10 minutes for the GPS to conclude that it needed to ask me approximately where it was. It kept trying to broaden the search for satellites but never widened the net enough to include a bird that's visible from Texas because it assumed I was in Maine. When I told it I was in Texas, it took less than 2 minutes to get an initial lock.

If you can figure out where you are very quickly, the GPS can skip that whole up-front search because it can send a quick ping to a local tower or two and figure out your location to within a few dozen miles in a matter of a few seconds. Knowing where you are that accurately means it can predict with really high confidence what satellites are in range, and start searching for them up front. So the "assisted" part pings towers, gets your rough location (which, by the way, Google Maps on the Blackberry and iPhone shows you while the GPS is still trying to get a lock), then feeds that information into the GPS as a "hint" to tell it what satellites to search for.

If you are outside cell range, the aGPS just becomes a plain old GPS. Still works just fine, just takes a little longer for that initial lock. About the same as it would if you had a non-assisted GPS, assuming the two units have similar antennas and similar processors, of course.

Re:Please take responsibility for your life.

[farnz]

A bigger problem over here in old blighty is articulated lorries getting stuck by driving down roads that are too narrow or otherwise unsuitable. One big problem in this case is it's virtually impossible to turn a lorry on a narrow road. So if the road starts looking bad the choices are to carry on and hope they don't get stuck, try to reverse out (very slow and likely to require a second person) or tow the lorry out.

In America, there are GPS maps created by commercial services for sale to the trucking industry. These maps include weight restrictions, width and height restrictions, truck routes, diesel fuel truck stops, tire and service centers, all kinds of information that is specific to the driving of big rigs. I would assume you have similar services available over there. But if your ordinary trucker thinks he can just drop a $99 Garmin on his dashboard and use it to drag a 30 tonne trailer to wherever he wants, well, that's almost as foolish as trying to cross two hundred miles of desert because there's a little blue line on the screen.

The same class of GPS map is sold in the UK; the problem is that they cost more than the cheap car GPS units. Taking Garmin as a sample manufacturer, the cheapest car unit they sell here is £99. The cheapest truck unit is £259. A trucker buying a GPS unit on his own dime because he's a bit unsure about how best to get to his destination, but isn't brave enough to ask the office to get the maps out is going to buy the £99 unit. And then he's going to foul up; if it wasn't such a problem for the rest of us, it'd just be funny.

Re:Please take responsibility for your life.

[compro01]

It can be tricky to see the depth of snow on a road. Uniform white snow breaks depth perception, especially in dusk/dawn light conditions (dim enough that vision is reduced, but light enough that your headlights aren't helpful.). I've driven in central Canadian winters for 8 years and it can still screw with you at times, especially on familiar roads, doubly so when the drifts weren't there yesterday.

It can also be tricky to tell where exactly the edge of the road is.

Re:Please take responsibility for your life.

[natehoy]

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...

Re:Please take responsibility for your life.

[Yvanhoe]

I'd like to stress out that as a western European tourist, I didn't have the notion that there could be lethal wilderness in a developed country the first time I went to US. Of course now I understand the scale of it but please keep in mind that the idea you can get stuck somewhere more than a day of walk from a town is uncommon for some foreigners.

Re:Darwin would be proud.

[Sponge Bath]

GPS is just a theory. I subscribe to Intelligent Directionism.

Darwin at work.

[mark-t]

Sorry if I sound unsympathetic... but really, who starts to drive through a large unpopulated expanse of land without at least making sure they have enough gas to make it across? I've seen "Last Chance" gas stations before, and in my experience they are totally serious... dare I even say deadly serious. If you don't fill up there, you can very well not expect to ever see another human being again for as long as you live... which might not be very long from now if you decide that you have enough gas just because your low gas indicator isn't lit.

Re:Darwin at work.

[Carnildo]

The thing is, if a town is big enough to warrant a sign on the road that is more than 25 miles away, then it's probably big enough to have a gas station too.

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.

Seen this

[DCFusor]

Or close enough. Not long ago I had a trucker come to my door, out of breath, having stuck his tractor at the bottom of the hill I live near the top of, being brought this way by MapQuest and GPS. Nothing special you say...well, evidently those services thought a 1 lane gravel road going straight up a mountain (in SW VA), complete with cliffs, deep ditches, and short radius turns was a perfectly fine route to send this dupe on. Believe me, there are plenty of small cars that don't make it on that road, and it took "the million dollar wrecker" many hours to extract this guy, probably cost him his job on top of it.
.

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.
.

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.
.

So yeah, it took both driver ignorance AND a lousy GPS to get there, but it seems both were willin'.

Re:Seen this

[guruevi]

You know there are specific Truck/Professional GPS units available? Off course they don't cost $50 but closer to $500 for the same 7" but the maps are specifically laid out for big rigs, hazmat and other restrictions to the roads that might come along on a cross-country drive. It seems to me that trucker probably wouldn't have been helped with a map either because he would've seen a shorter route on the map regardless.

The whole country (at least the US) is mapped and all restrictions on the roads (height, width, weight, curvature) are known by the government and private mapping companies. Those databases literally take up Terabytes and have to get condensed into usable information on a 4Gig data card, not something you can put in the simplest GPS units just yet.

I've been seeing this for decades now...

[Iphtashu Fitz]

I was in the US Coast Guard from roughly 1990 to 2000, and GPS quickly became a very popular alternative to the older LORAN-C system used by recreational & commercial boaters alike. I did a number of patrols in Boston Harbor, which has a few very shallow spots in it. There are a couple places in particular where there are rocks just below the surface of the water at low tide, but if you have even the most basic level of understanding aids to navigation (bouys, etc) it's very easy to avoid those spots. There's one spot south of Logan Airport called "lower middle" that has rocks just below the waterline, but well marked channels guide boaters well around both sides of it.

I still clearly recall one summer day when we were on patrol and saw a small boat moving slowly through lower middle, pretty much directly toward where we knew the rocks were. We sped towards them as quickly as we could and tried to get their attention, but before we could we saw the unmistakable result of their boat hitting the rocks at a slow speed - the boat lurched a bit and the back kicked up noticeably. By the time we got close enough to them without putting our own boat in danger we could see oil starting to leak out around their engine.

When we told the operator that he was well outside the marked channels and that he had struck a rock that's clearly marked on all navigation charts, he simply replied, "Well my GPS told me to turn left here."

Re:I've been seeing this for decades now...

[radtea]

When we told the operator that he was well outside the marked channels and that he had struck a rock that's clearly marked on all navigation charts, he simply replied, "Well my GPS told me to turn left here."

I grew up living on a rocky point with reefs offshore in an area with 16 foot tides, and every couple of years my father and brother and I would rescue boaters who'd run aground. This was back when LORAN was still pretty new and GPS undreamed of, but the universal feature of people who hit the rocks was that the only navigation aid on board was--at best--a road map.

A big part of the problem is that people are simply ignorant. If you didn't grow up in an area or haven't lived there for a long time it can be hard to appreciate the risks. And most people grow up in urban or suburban areas that effectively have no (natural) risks at all. People like that simply don't know enough to appreciate that the landscape and climate can kill them if they don't take the appropriate precautions. GPS is just an enabling device that helps that ignorance get them killed: it creates an illusion of safety and certainty that they might otherwise not have, although according to the article people were plenty able to get into trouble without it.

Re:I've been seeing this for decades now...

[starfishsystems]

Any competent navigator knows to treat GPS as a tool for verifying where you are. Period.

Unless all other means of verification (visual, compass, sextant, RDF, depth sounder, radar, LORAN, dead reckoning) are unavailable, you should never rely on GPS alone.

Boaters should be particularly suspicious of GPS devices which instruct them to "take next exit right after overpass".

Bear Grylls don't need no stinkin' GPS

[Lucas123]

He'd hold two sticks up to the sun, determine his location and time to destination ... then eat a few grubs and squeeze a shot of water from some animal dung.

Re:Bear Grylls don't need no stinkin' GPS

[Luminary Crush]

... and then he'd pack it in for the day, take the camera crew out for a nice dinner at the nearest steakhouse, check into his hotel and be all fresh for the next day's shoot.

Bear is at best entertainment (think 'fear factor' outdoors), at worst a fraud. A real "survivorman" is Les Stroud, who packs in all his own gear and films everything himself, alone... and actually stays out in the wilderness for the duration.

Re:Bear Grylls don't need no stinkin' GPS

[sanosuke001]

I always felt Bear Grylls was a hack; Les Stroud I enjoy watching because he actually walks you through what he is doing to survive. If Bear gets screwed somehow, he's got people to back him up. Bear goes for the crazy shit to sell TV. Les doesn't have that luxury; he can't even contact help. If he doesn't show up in the seven days, they go look for him. Les Stroud is much more believable. That feces water thing is bullshit... Bear is completely stupid.

Re:Bear Grylls don't need no stinkin' GPS

[afidel]

No, Les had a sat phone, he was capable of calling for help and did at least twice. But in general you are right, whatever Bear does do the exact opposite whereas Les may actually give you some decent pointers.

Re:Bear Grylls don't need no stinkin' GPS

[Graff]

Les doesn't have that luxury; he can't even contact help. If he doesn't show up in the seven days, they go look for him.

Les isn't that crazy, he's stated several times that he does take a locater device with him but it's only used in an extreme emergency. However the rest of it is true. He doesn't have anyone with him and he does everything on his own - including the multi-angle and long-distance shots.

There have been quite a few "shock factor" things that Bear Grylls has done that will probably get you killed if you did them out in the wilderness. For example, that whole thing about putting urine up your rectum is a horrible idea. The amount of water you could absorb that way would be negligible and you risk perforating the mucosa of the rectal wall and/or introducing infection.

Perhaps Bear Grylls really does know something about survival techniques but he throws in so many crazy ideas that it's tough to separate what's sensible from what's radical. Les Stroud walks you through the concepts and presents you with solid ideas for survival that have the best chance for getting you out alive, even if they aren't flashy.

DON'T READ THE ARTICLE

[scribblej]

No really. Talk about depressing. It's about a six-year old kid and his mom, the kid dies. That's sad enough, but they have to give you some horrible details and imagery that's incredibly depressing.

I'm gunna go run a hot bath and slit my wrists now. Or maybe make some toast.

I suspect conspiracy.

[SharpFang]

Reminds me of a background element in the "Girl Genius" comic.

A candy dispenser ball, filled with candies in big glass sphere, and a pretty poster over it, written in big friendly colorful letters:

.....POISON......
Illiteracy reduction program

Re:Kill It Before It Dies

[royallthefourth]

If you actually talk like this in person, then you are probably the most disgusting, insufferable asshole that anyone around you has ever met.

who can forget the nightmare of james kim

[circletimessquare]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Kim

this story haunts me. because i could have done this. any of us could

and for those of you assholes talking about the darwin awards or death by stupidity: i think arrogant hubris is a pretty good candidate gene for being weeded from the homo sapiens gene pool. when stories like these arise, there's two types of people: those who feel saddened at a pointless death, aka, human beings, and those who think that the occasion is an opportunity to trumpet how smart they are, aka, assholes with an ego problem and lacking empathy

you're so fucking smart and immune to tragedy, huh? until a tragedy happens to you or yours. try showing some basic simple respect for the dead, asswipes

Re:who can forget the nightmare of james kim

[Sarten-X]

I'm sure anybody can make a bad decision at any time, but it doesn't mean the mistake isn't stupid. Death by stupidity is a normal part of life. It's not an issue of being inherently smarter. It's an issue of "somebody's going to do it". Ideally, the survivors learn from the mistakes of others and don't repeat history.

Instead of returning to the exit, they consulted a highway map and picked a secondary route that skirted the Wild Rogue Wilderness, a remote area of southwestern Oregon.

From James Kim, I learn that I shouldn't choose alternate routes that take me near wilderness unless I'm prepared to spend time in the wilderness.

Re:who can forget the nightmare of james kim

[circletimessquare]

when i talk about lack of empathy and arrogant hubris, it helps not to come charging in and making yourself a poster child for exactly this sort of character defect

"There is no reason I should feel saddened at pointless death"

it's called empathy. it is the basis for all of human morality. that's the reason why you should feel saddened. other than that, a simple basic human respect for the dead is reason why you might tone down your i'm-so-smart-and-so-immune-to-simple-human-mistakes arrogant ignorance

"It doesn't make me any less human to not give a flying fuck about that dude."

actually, yes it does. if you lack basic human empathy you lack one the defining characteristics of what makes us human

simple human reciprocity means i respect you, you respect me. i feel for you. you feel for me. yet you come in with your stellar social skills making the pre-emptive statement: "feel nothing for me because i feel nothing for you". what a social genius

unless of course you believe you are immune from any need for aid or mutual support, that you are an infallible island that requires no support, even emergency, from your fellow man. then go ahead and preemptively announce your "i'm special" status. like i said, genius

Re:who can forget the nightmare of james kim

[jklovanc]

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."

Re:who can forget the nightmare of james kim

[Dracolytch]

No, more broadly, and more important:

If you're lost/stranded, never leave the protection of your car.
Please Remember What's First!

PRWF

Protection
Rescue
Water
Food

Importance is in order. Do not give up protection without a extremely high chance of rescue.

Only bad tech is the linked page.

[MDMurphy]

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.

Navigation before tools

[SpaghettiPattern]

I'm doing a skipper course where navigation and calculating water levels are the most stressed topics. I quickly realised that going to sea without training will get you killed pretty soon and very certainly. Same holds for deserts and wilderness in general. Hell, there are cities where you get killed if you wind up in the wrong 'hood.

The thing is that so many times all will be well with a car, a desert and a some navigation gadget. Taking care of the exceptions is the hard part. Very much like coding.

How to Mess with OnStar

[plover]

So if you're up there on those wintery roads and bored out of your mind, try this: Drive your OnStar equipped vehicle to the middle of a large frozen lake. Press the button. Continue driving in straight lines, occasionally stopping to make square left and right hand turns. Talk to the nice lady from India (or Southern California) who has never seen ice in any amount larger than a water pitcher, and tell her you're kind of lost.

Re:How to Mess with OnStar

[RobertB-DC]

Talk to the nice lady from India (or Southern California) who has never seen ice in any amount larger than a water pitcher, and tell her you're kind of lost.

No need to work that hard, just do what I did. Run out of gas in West Texas, say between Childress and Quanah. Make it on a sunny 100-degree-plus Sunday afternoon in the middle of summer. You, too, can have a conversation with OnStar like I did!

Me (sheepish): I ran out of gas.
OnStar: We'll send someone right out.

Time passes...

OnStar: Sir, we show you near Childress, Texas, but I don't have any facilities there. What's the nearest larger town?
Me: This is West Texas, Ma'm. There are no larger towns.

They ended up sending out the county sheriff with a five-gallon jug of gas.

Re:gadgets suppress the preparation instinct

[eltonito]

I concur, but I'd also argue that certain gadgets also suppress ones danger instinct, which is highly relevant in the cases presented by the article. The stranded drivers all sensed they were making the wrong move leading up to their incidents, but they failed to act on it because they allowed the gadget pre-empted or overrode their instincts. These weren't necessarily unintelligent people, they simply trusted the technology more than their instincts which lead to a series of poor choices.

As much as I'd love to crack jokes about Darwinism in these cases, I can look back on my life and find several instances where my reliance on a product/gadget/technology got me into trouble. I imagine most people could find similar moments somewhere in their past. The difference is that those mistakes weren't as serious, didn't get publicized and they likely didn't occur in Death Valley.

Article is a little unfair....

[Geoffrey.landis]

The article is a little unfair; to be fair it would have to subtract people saved by GPS.

Frankly, people have always gotten lost, dating right back to at least the time Moses wandered for 40 years in the Sinai. Surely GPS has also gotten people out of trouble. The question is, what's the net effect?

Re:The Problems with GPS

[radtea]

The other problem is even the map updates are frequently best guesses.

It would seem that another problem is that these units have a city-dweller's notion of what consitutes a "road" and a "car". Outside of cities the concept of "road" is a lot vaguer, and vehicle type is a lot more relevant. I've been down "roads" in a Willies Jeep that you wouldn't want to take in anything else, and used "roads" that are only seasonably passable. Some "roads" are only drivable in late summer and mid-winter (too muddy at other times); some are impassable in winter due to snow or spring due to flooding; some are passable only in winter due to to freezing (and only then if they've been plowed); and so on.

There is no reason why most of this knowledge could not be respresented in a GPS navigation unit, but the people who write software for them apparently don't ever actually use them go out of the city.

Re:It happens

[Americano]

You understand that getting stuck in a snowdrift doesn't require a lot of snow to be on the road... right?

Ground clearance on a lot of vehicles can be measured in inches. Skidding and getting stuck in a drift 6-12 inches deep is easy to do with front wheel drive. I've seen people skid off I-90 in northwestern Pennsylvania in snowy conditions, and get stuck in drifts while driving a hundred yards behind a snow plow / sand truck. I-90 is a major interstate, and the road was about as clear as it's going to get in snowy conditions.

The real danger would be that, on a seasonal road, it may be very difficult to find any assistance to get yourself hauled *out* of the snowbank.

Technically

[DarthVain]

It's not GPS, is the routing software messing up usually due to lack of data (or out of date) as opposed to logical fault. I am pretty sure the satellites had very little to do with it other than say "Your Here!" over and over again.

Of course I remember when GPS was a "big deal" and specialized, I remember taking a course in it, and having to provide training to others. When units cost thousands of dollars. Of course I am in GIS and understand all the background. Heck there was a time when the US Army would mess with your accuracy just for fun, and you had to try to correct for it!

Now any smuck can go to bestbuy and pick up something for 150$ and it tells you where to go.

You're supposed to use a tool, not let the tool use you.

Re:I Never Fully Trust GPS...

[MartinSchou]

It is my opinion that the GPS manufacturers are:

4) Expecting you to read the manuals thoroughly before relying on a complex computer system.

Hell, you pretty much spell it out twice, as you explain that you later "discovered" two rather important features of your navigation system. But hey - I'm sure they aren't covered in the manual at all, and are hidden features that you're supposed to pay extra for.

Bears Buy GPS Jammers

[Walt Dismal]

Hungry bears are buying GPS jammers and quietly laughing.

His primary bad decision was moving

[sirwired]

I remember when I was in Boy Scouts, our leader told us to ignore any advice you might have heard about finding your way back to civilization if you are lost. If somebody, somewhere, has some remote clue as to where you might be (and thinks to have someone search), you are 100% better off not going anywhere. You probably are not as lost as you think, and are likely not far from where you were trying to be. The best way for somebody to find you is for you not to go even farther away.

Yes, by moving you may, by dumb luck, blunder back to where you need to be, but you are far more likely to simply end up getting more lost and hard to find.

And never, ever, abandon your car if you are lost. It contains all sorts of useful resources and is rather larger (and easier to find) than you wandering about the woods alone, passed out under a tree. It contains a conveniently large tank of liquid firestarter, and if you carry a couple of basic tools, a large amount of nice insulation in the form of your seat cushions and carpeting. In the heat, the underside is perfectly good shade (if a little cramped.)