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Apple Maps Flaw Sends Drivers Across Airport Runway
solareagle writes "The BBC reports that an Alaskan airport says it has had to place barricades across one of its taxiways after an Apple Maps flaw resulted in iPhone users driving across a runway. The airport said it had complained to the phone-maker through the local attorney general's office. 'We asked them to disable the map for Fairbanks until they could correct it, thinking it would be better to have nothing show up than to take the chance that one more person would do this,' Melissa Osborn, chief of operations at the airport, told the Alaska Dispatch newspaper. The airport said it had been told the problem would be fixed by Wednesday. However the BBC still experienced the issue when it tested the app, asking for directions to the site from a property to the east of the airport. By contrast the Google Maps app provided a different, longer route which takes drivers to the property's car park."
Now we see why big corporations retain batteries of lawyers to write voluminous "I Agree" waivers.
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
Well, you did ask for the fastest route.
How did the driver get it onto the airport taxiways? I live pretty close to an airport and the taxiways are all very barricaded, you can't just drive onto an airport without someone noticing.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
They are using their roads incorrectly. Next time they should consult Apple before undertaking such projects so that the routes can be preapproved.
Cool. Apple is now providing taxiing directions for pilots!
Never shake hands with a man you meet in a fertility clinic.
"Google Maps Flaw Sends Drivers Across Pacific Ocean" -- article circa 2009
"The airport said it had complained to the phone-maker through the local attorney general's office."
The airport couldn't contact Apple directly? Instead they need to involve other levels of bureaucracy and red tape?
It's a user flaw.
I never understood how someone could just blindly follow GPS directions and enter what is most likely very well marked security area, or even just use common sense and NOT drive onto a runway. Also mind boggling is the idea of driving into a river or lake.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Maybe the drivers in these cases should lose their license. Ignorance of the law is not a valid defense, so saying that my iPhone told me to drive across a runway should make no difference. If somebody is stupid enough to do that, they are too stupid to be allowed to drive. Maybe Apple should re-think their "Think Different" campaign and just tell people to "Think!"
In some parts of the world, "by Wednesday" means "before Wednesday". It's like the differences between "next/this/last weekend" in different regions of the US.
It's fairly boring. Here is the NOTAM:
FAI FAIRBANKS INTL
!FAI 09/092 FAI TWY FLOAT POND RD AT TWY B CLSD LGTD AND BARRICADED TIL 1309302355
You can find it at Pilotweb, unfortunately I can't immediately see how to post a direct URL. You can see it matches the details in this article.
No.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Even then though, did the BBC check before 0:00:01 cupertino time?
May still have been Tuesday...
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I live in Fairbanks Alaska, and use the airport a few times per month. Even though it serves big planes (737s and 757s, and even 747 cargo planes sometimes), it also has a substantial general aviation area, a float plane pond (i.e., a lake), and a number of small commercial operations that are on the GA side of the airport. You can see this a little bit in the the article's coverage, or fire up your favorite mapping program to take a look.
The commercial side of the airport is similar to anyplace else in the US: lots of fences, signs, and recordings saying you should not park in the red zone. The GA and small carrier side is more open. You can drive right up to, say, Wright Air's twin propeller aircraft and load up your dog food (or dogs). There are two pairs of runways and taxiways: one serves the commercial side, then there is a float pond in the middle, and then there is the side for GA and small in-state carriers.
What Apple directions do is bring people in via the GA side (which is over a mile away from the commercial side, and involves a very different driving route). As the article says, it's utterly ridiculous that anyone would drive from the GA side, through the parking lots onto the GA tarmac, onto the GA taxiway (literally driving among parked aircraft), cross the GA runway, find one of the crossing points for the pond, cross the commercial runway, and get onto the commercial taxiway on the way to the commercial tarmac. If they did, they'd have no way to get to the commercial side parking lot or into the ticket counter or whatever, without finding their way around a hefty fence. Ridiculous, unless you're ignoring all the signage and indicators that you're really in the wrong place.
The setup at FAI (aka PAFA) is not that unusual, even at fairly large airports. General aviation is very popular, and there are plenty of in-state commercial operations (especially in Alaska!) that do not require the same security procedures etc. as interstate or international. Getting to the general aviation area is usually just a matter of driving up. The situation at FAI, where you can get from the GA side to the commercial side, via runways, is typical at least at smaller regional airports. For the most part, large commercial aircraft stay on their runway, and smaller operators and private pilots stay on a different runway, taxiway, etc.
The airport doesn't get a ton of traffic. Just a few score commercial flights per day, and a seasonally variable number of smaller operators and private pilots. There is a control tower, so it's reasonable to assume that any misplaced people driving their car on the runway will be spotted by the tower operator, if an aircraft is preparing to take off or land. This isn't to understate the potential danger. I can imagine someone in a rush to get their plane, speeding across the runway before anyone spots them, resulting in a collision or other mishap.
I hope this helps. The pictures in the article are pretty good, but don't explain the two different sides of the airport.
PS: If you are in Fairbanks, and need to take an interstate commercial flight, drive along Airport Way. Just follow the signs.
You don't want to get on the airport unless youve bought the hangar there, otherwise the cops will be all over you.
This space for rent.
In New Mexico, Google maps sent drivers 50 miles out of their way because it doesn't know that a road that was closed 2 years ago in a flood was re-opened shortly after that. Considering this is a main route to a National Monument, it's not just some podunk mistake. They finally fixed this last week.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Reporter: Why did you drive on the airport runway?
Driver: My iPhone said it was the fastest path to the airport
Reporter: If your phone said to drive off a cliff, would you?
Driver: Well duh, it's the fastest way to the bottom of the cliff
Airport's fault. No one should be able to drive their car right onto the runway, no matter what GPS or voice in their heads is telling them. Fire whoever runs this airport because they're a moron for not putting a fence up
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Airport's fault. No one should be able to drive their car right onto the runway, no matter what GPS or voice in their heads is telling them. Fire whoever runs this airport because they're a moron for not putting a fence up
I think it's pretty reasonable to think that a MILE of warning signs that you might get hit by a freaking plane is enough deterant.
And before you keep going on about physical security, remember that stupid is always going to find a way.
From TFA:
"They had to enter the airport property via a motion-activated gate, and afterwards there are many signs, lights and painted markings, first warning that aircraft may share the road and then that drivers should not be there at all.
"They needed to drive over a mile with all this before reaching the runway. But the drivers disregarded all that because they were following the directions given on their iPhones."
These aren't drunk frat boys pulling some shenaigans in the middle of the night. These are fully competent, licensed drivers who turned off their own brains and replaced them with iPhones. This is NOT the airport's fault. It's called personal responsibility.
Right. So the TSA are x-raying and groping passengers, meanwhile the gates are open for anyone who wants to go joy-riding on the runway. Seems inconsistent.
These are fully competent, licensed drivers who turned off their own brains and replaced them with iPhones. This is NOT the airport's fault. It's called personal responsibility.
No, it's called "loyal Apple users".
So what you are saying is that they built it wrong.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
And we can't even take comfort from them potentially getting a Darwin Award.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Airport's fault. No one should be able to drive their car right onto the runway, no matter what GPS or voice in their heads is telling them. Fire whoever runs this airport because they're a moron for not putting a fence up
I think it's pretty reasonable to think that a MILE of warning signs that you might get hit by a freaking plane is enough deterant.
And before you keep going on about physical security, remember that stupid is always going to find a way.
From TFA:
"They had to enter the airport property via a motion-activated gate, and afterwards there are many signs, lights and painted markings, first warning that aircraft may share the road and then that drivers should not be there at all.
"They needed to drive over a mile with all this before reaching the runway. But the drivers disregarded all that because they were following the directions given on their iPhones."
These aren't drunk frat boys pulling some shenaigans in the middle of the night. These are fully competent, licensed drivers who turned off their own brains and replaced them with iPhones. This is NOT the airport's fault. It's called personal responsibility.
I do wonder what would happen if Apple Maps told everyone to jump off a bridge....
This is part of a MUCH larger problem I call "the machine never lies" which i have run into MANY times and it goes like this...if common sense tells you one thing and a machine another? The machine never lies so you are incorrect. I have had to call a manager when a cash register said change for a hundred with a 9 dollar purchase was 11 dollars, common sense would tell you that its wrong but the girl simply refused to believe the machine COULD be wrong so hence the manager. I had to go through that again recently when a relative passed on, the moron at the desk refused to believe she didn't owe property taxes for this year...on a piece of property she had sold over a decade ago. Again the machine doesn't lie so no matter what it says they believe it.
As more and more crap like built in mapping end up on every phone I have a feeling we'll see a lot of morons driving off of bridges, driving out in front of trains, as long as the machine tells them to? The little lemmings will march on...God who would have thought that Idiocracy would end up being a documentary?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Apple Maps lacks the capacity to send anyone anywhere. What happened is that it made a stupid recommendation, as computers are apt to do, and as most people know computers are apt to do. And a small fraction of stupid/negligent/careless/malicious people blindly followed the recommendation, apparently unable to read signs or use common sense about whether or not to drive on runways.
If the airport people had been smart, then instead of putting up barriers (well, actually, maybe that's a good idea anyway, stupid maps or not) and "complaining to" Apple, they would have made fun of Apple and got an airport cop to profitably ticket all the stupid people who think it's ok to drive on airport runways.
The more I think of it, what we have here, is a way to mechanically catch the very worst/stupidest/most_negligent_and_dangerous drivers on the road. Cities ought to be making deals with Apple and Google to route morons into places where they'll prove to courts that they are incompetent drivers, and then we can have them removed from traffic, or at least their points will reflect the higher risks they pose and maybe their insurance rates will become more in line with the risks they choose, so everyone else can pay a little less. Everyone wins. I'm not sure it would even be entrapment, because most jurors would realize that the driver was stupid and negligent even before the city paid for the joke directions.
"R2D2, you know better than to trust a strange computer."
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
No this is consistently inconsistent across the entire world. Here in Australia there is no TSA. Yet you can fly from a major city in a plane carrying 180 passengers and have to clear some hours worth of security checks to get to another city or country. In a country town you can fly in a plane carrying 180 passengers and have to clear a pool fence (no I'm not joking, it's a magnetic latched, child safe pool fence) to get to one of the same cities with the same number of people on board.
These are fully competent, licensed drivers who turned off their own brains and replaced them with iPhones.
In some cases this could be an upgrade
Its primarily the users fault for trusting the GPS implicitly and ignoring the signs and the fact they were driving onto a bloody runway. This says a lot about Apple users.
No. It says nothing about Apple users at all. It says the two people who drove across a runway are idiots. You don't know that there weren't many, many other Apple users who said "the instructions take me across a runway, so I'll ignore them". You also don't know how many Google/TomTom/Garmin etc users would have done the same thing if presented with erroneous instructions.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe