Trust your GPS?

[superdave1984]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap_travel/20080806/ap_tr_ge/travel_brief_lost_convoy

Tue Aug 5, 9:27 PM ET

CANNONVILLE, Utah - A GPS device led a convoy of tourists astray, finally stranding them on the edge of a sheer cliff.
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With little food or water, the group of 10 children and 16 adults from California had to spend a night in their cars deep inside the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

They used a global positioning device to plot out a backcountry route Saturday from Bryce Canyon National Park to the Grand Canyon.

But the device couldn't tell how rough the roads were. One vehicle got stuck in soft sand, two others ran low on fuel. And the device offered suggestions that led them onto the wrong dirt roads, which ended at a series of cliffs.

The group was so lost it couldn't figure out how to backtrack and started to panic. Kids were crying, and one infant was sick with fever, according to a member of the party.

"It was a nightmare — the vacation from hell," Daniel Cohen, back home safely in Los Angeles, told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "That's a story I will tell my kids. For now, I don't want anybody to know about it."

From Grosvenor Arch, where the travelers stopped, they should have taken the better-traveled Cottonwood Canyon Road. Instead, they took Four Mile Bench Road, which takes a meandering southeasterly path. Chief Deputy Tracy Glover said the convoy took one wrong turn after another onto a succession of lesser dirt paths that are barely passable in the best of weather. They finally ended so some 25 miles from Grosvenor Arch near Tibbet Canyon.

"They just kept driving and driving and driving," Glover told the AP.

Cohen said the group had no idea it was setting off in the wrong direction.

"A friend with navigation device said we should go that way, and we all went that went," he said. "I had no clue where we were, I can tell you that. But the next day when we saw the airplane, we were jumping."

Glover said a GPS device is no substitute for good judgment or detailed topographical maps.

"People can start down a nice, graded dirt road and it can soon turn into boulders and deep washes, but they continue driving instead of turning around. I don't understand it," Glover told The Salt Lake Tribune. "The shortest way is not always the quickest way."

It took a lot of back-and-forth cell phone calls, but sheriff's deputies were able to find the group Sunday and lead them back out to Cannonville.

It wasn't the first time Staircase visitors have wandered into near oblivion. Dozens have been stranded since the monument was created in 1996, often with the false encouragement of a GPS device, said Bureau of Land Management spokesman Larry Crutchfield.

A group of Belgium tourists had to lick condensation off their minivan's windshield for water after being stranded on Four Mile Bench in May 2007. Riders on all-terrain vehicles stumbled across the group.

In the same country in early March 2003, a South African man living in London and his Quincy, Mass., girlfriend were stranded for six days by a powerful snowstorm.

Rachel Crowley, 27, died four miles after setting out from their buried rental Jeep. A cattle rancher found George Metcalfe, 27, staggering 15 miles away on Four Mile Bench Road. He survived.

 

[Dishtowel]

wow, not so much "trust your GPS" as "trust your own decision making"

 

[Shotokan1509]

Taking a backcountry route in a 1.7 million acre national park... sounds like they should have been better prepared.

 

[thoughtcriminal]

*shrugs* common sense still has to come into play. its their own fault for not using it. Machines can not be relied on to do all the thinking, because as intelligent as it may seem, its only capable of thinking how its programmed to think.

 

[LearjetMinako]

GPS is good for tracking your routes and giving a rough point of location. But in no way should it be used sololy as a guide and map. Once the batteries are dead, they are dead. Maps never need batteries. Better judgement is key. Not all roads are labeled on the GPS and correct. (I've found that one out when it tried to led me through a corn field saying there was a road).

Do I use GPS, Yes. But only as far as my judgement agrees with it. If they don't agree, good old compass, map, stars, and signs are my key to put me back on track.

 

[lil_Blue_Ford]

I am consistantly amazed by the trust people put in their GPS devices and such. I remember a series of commercials a few years back where they made light of the fact and would show someone driving along an the GPS would squack somethin like "turn right" and the idiot behind the wheel would crank the wheel over and plow into a building or something, then the device would finish an say "in 50 feet." I laughed at it until I realized how true it was.

I've had someone in my truck before going places (several people actually) and either had them ask if we were lost or if I wasn't sure and needed to consult a map. I've often either handed over a map (if it was on my side) or told them to reach down an fetch a map out of the map pocket on their side. And would be promptly forced to find a spot to pull over when the response would be "well I don't know how the fawk to read a map!" "What do you mean you can't read a map!?!" "I don't have any idea how to read a map." "It's easy." "I don't know how to do it." Skrreeetch. "gimme the fawkin thing.... we need to get here an we're over here, yup, that's what I thought. Stuff this back on that side."

 

[milje]

These people don't seen like the type that would be able to read a map.

 

[exbass94]

I absolutely love my GPS unit. It's an invaluable tool when making deliveries to places I've never been before, and it's never steered me in the wrong direction.

 

[sonyes]

If you're using a GPS as sole means of navigation you get what you deserve. We live in a world where we have access to hundreds of wonderful tools. Even the best tools are only as intuitive as the person operating them.

I love using GPS when I fly it makes things a heck of a lot easier. That being said I have 2 Nav radios as backups that I can use blindfolded if need be. I also have a chart as the ultimate backup.

Semper Letteris Mandate

 

[rboyer]

I once had a GPS unit tell me to turn onto the OFF-Ramp for I80 instead of the ON-Ramp! If not for the fact that it was an area that I was familiar with I may have been ignorant enough to actually follow through with the directions which I was given. It was some generic GPS unit that a friend of mine brought along for the trip so it was most likely just a fault in the software for that particular type of unit and there could have been more current updates for it out there. But Chaos Theory dictates that people WILL die from these things, there are just too many roads throughout the entire country with too many random events happening and people put way too much trust into them.

 

[Will]

It's the software, not the GPS receiver. Used to be, you push the button and wait for your 8-digit grid coordinates.

I guess these lost people are disconnected from living in their point and click video game worlds. When I was in the military we didn't have a GPS. The Platoon Commander showed you where you were, pointed out prominent terrain features and you paid attention to your map and compass so you didn't end up as lost as a bastard on Father's Day.

 

[4x4mike2004]

gps units are useless if you dont know how to use them. there is no substitute for common sense and a good map.

 

[MAKG]

Those road maps are fiendishly inaccurate; the data comes from the census, and was intended to enumerate addresses. NOTHING more. Yesterday, one tried to drive me off a cliff in Cody, WY. I *SAW* the cliff.

I also overruled it last week in Christmas Valley, OR, when I decided the road it wanted to take me on was a bit much for a Geo Prizm.

And how the F are these guys getting cell signals in the Grand Staircase? I can only get them in actual towns and interstate highways here in Wyoming. Right now, I'm 30 miles from the nearest tower. Christmas Valley was MUCH further.