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Australian Police Warn That Apple Maps Could Get Someone Killed
First time accepted submitter jsherring writes "Police in Victoria, Australia warn that Apple's glitch-filled Maps app could get someone killed, after motorists looking for the Victorian city of Mildura were instead guided to a wilderness area. Relying on Apple Maps to navigate through rural Australia seems rather foolish but it has become common practice to rely on GPS navigation. Besides reverting to google maps, perhaps Apple should provide strong warnings to use other navigation sources if navigating to remote locations."
You obviously haven't driven in Australia much.. Google maps See how you are driving through national parks and farmland before getting back to an urban area? Well Apple maps just takes you through a different national park and dumps you there. 45C is also 113F. And there is no phone reception or water. And people have already been stuck for 24 hours
If you are trying to get to a residential area, and instead take a dirt road into a wilderness area, while blindly following your GPS, and you get eaten by a crocodile, you deserve the Darwin award you're about to get.
The problem is that in Australia you sometimes do have to take dirt roads through wildnerness areas to get to residential areas. Sometimes for hundreds of kilometres.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
. But isn't it silly to drive these distances through the wilderness
You're not quite getting it. It's not 'wilderness' as such, it's 'ordinary' distances in 'ordinary' rural Australia. 500km gets me half the way across Queensland and I've done double that (driving 900km from Mt Isa to Townsville) on a regular basis without any concern.
Concerns are limited because:
- You usually go about 100-150 kilometers before the next fuel stop.
- Roads have a reasonable amount of traffic (30-100 vehicles an hour).
- Towns are normally where the GPS tells you they are.
And that's the problem, because if the map you've got is a little vague and that town isn't there, then the rough "I can make it there with 1/4 tank to spare" calculation doesn't get you back that 100km to the previous town where you should have filled up and it doesn't get you to the next town either.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
I live in Perth (the capital of Western Australia not the UK one) I'm 20 minutes drive from the city centre, 15 minutes drive to wonderful beaches, and 10 minutes drives in several directions to bushland remote enough that if I had a heart attack while walking they would never find the body. Australia is a big empty place, your biggest dangers (apart from hitting a roo, or dozing off and driving into oncoming road trains (single lane 110kmph YAY)) is not making it to the next petrol station. Its ok in urban areas, but as soon as you leave metro... better make sure you know your fuel efficiency. But if you do stray off a main road, even by accident, its not like there is any space to turn around. Up in shark bay we pulled off onto a beach carpark and went down a sudden incline over the shells. No way to turn back and the only way was forward and hope the loop put you back somewhere else. Long story short sedan started to bottom out so we lost our nerve and tried to turn around. Big mistake, soon as we left the compressed trail we sank to the chassis at all 4 wheels. No reception, had hike through the bush back to the main road to hail a tourist bus to get the townsite to send out a truck to pull us out.
This happened only last month when two guys working on a station got their 4WD bogged 10 miles from the homestead and tried to walk back under the hot sun. One of them died from heat and dehydration.
You obviously haven't driven in Australia much..
Not really different for Canada, every year we get hundreds of people who are sent off into logging roads, or CO-Access roads. Basically no maintenance at all, and not traveled by anything but snowmobiles in the winter. Where there is no phone service, no water except from the snow, and no food for a few hundred KM or more. And on some days it'll hit a frosty -30C. This has happened all over the place here in Canada, and the police have put out numerous warnings to not trust your GPS at all. While Australia has 45C temperatures, you can survive that for a few days, if you're lucky. Here when it hits -30C you might have 5-6 hours if you're not dressed for it. Especially if the snowmobile patrols are already out hunting for someone else.
Then again this has happened quite a bit in the US too. Where people have been dumped in the middle of death valley as a "shortcut" and only by pure luck they didn't die.
Om, nomnomnom...
Australia is ~99% the area of the lower 48 of the US - i.e. essentially the same size. Very convenient comparison when Americans ask you how big Australia is. Often they seem surprised for some reason though. I suspect it might have something to do with the way Mercator projection exaggerates the areas of places as you get further poleward (the US is significantly further north than Australia is south).
The US is 'wider' east to west, but Australia is quite a bit 'taller', north to south (especially if you include Tasmania).