Has GPS gotten you lost?

[Mathman]

I came across this web article about someone’s GPSr getting them lost so I thought I would pass it on.

GPSr got you lost?

[RJ McKenzie]

Heck no, my GPSr has gotten me “unlost” most of the time

[Team Black-Cat]

Never happens.
😕

[gotta run]

The premise of the article isn’t right. The GPSr didn’t cause him to do anything, it was his poor decision with the type of vehicle he had. Obviously he could tell the road was too narrow before turning on it, and he looks like he tried to do a Y turn after getting in trouble.

On the Left Side of the Road...

[One Paddle Short]

Mathman already knows it has happened to me. Our Venture Crew went for a week of canoeing in Canada this last summer. We went to the same area we had the year before and rented our boats from the same outfitter. Last year we just followed the outfitter with a trailer full of canoes to the well-hidden boat landing in the middle of nowhere. I did mark a waypoint that year and marked a lot of campsites and so forth. I had been appointed our “navigator” as the result of having the GPS, knowing how to use it, and for having all the waypoints from the year before.

We were in a hurry. It was our goal to get out on the lake and find a campsite before dark. We had been driving since 6 AM to reach Atikokan in the late afternoon. The outfitter was in a hurry to get us out on the lake too so they could end their day. They asked if we could find our own way to the boat landing as we were still buying some fishing licenses and so forth and they were ready to go drop canoes ASAP. Everyone asked me if I could get them there. Thinking about my marked waypoint I said, “sure, no problem.”

When we all got into the vehicles I started out going the direction I had remembered from the year before. I did a “Goto” the boat landing following roads and “What the &*$(#(“, the thing is telling me to turn around and go directly the opposite direction of what I remembered. I pulled over, everyone is in a rush, I’m trying to figure this out. I look at my screen and search the route. It’s not the way we went the year before but it looks like a shortcut. Hmmmm. This thing is almost always right. I decide to trust the GPS. We turn all three cars around and start following the directions on the little screen. Things look Ok for a while. But then there were large- let’s call them pot holes- in the road. I say let’s call them that because they could have sucked up one of our vans if we didn’t carefully go around them. Then the blacktop road started having trees and bushes growing THROUGH the blacktop on both sides effectively making our two-lane road a ONE LANE road. Still I pushed onward hoping the little screen would deliver the whole crew, under my navigation, to the boat landing before the sun set. Eventually we lost the blacktop and were on dirt. It was clear our rental vans would not make it through this way- if there even was a THROUGH this way. After a mile or two there was little doubt this thing could end with one of our rental vans stuck in the Canadian wilderness.

I finally had to pull over and admit defeat. We had to turn around and go all the way back to Atikokan and search out the way we had gone the year before. We lost at least an hour- probably more- with this road that clearly wasn’t a road any longer.

In the end we made it to the boat landing. If it wasn’t for the waypoint we would have driven right by the tiny two-track road that led to the entry lake. No way I would have remembered it from the year before. We managed to get everybody into boats and to a “campsite” just as the bugs came out in droves to attack us in the fading light.

The rest of the trip went well and the topo maps never let me down lake-wise (I was running Navigator for the roads prior to arriving at the boat landing). But, things were sure looking rough for a while there on the road the forest was taking back.

[bugsmasher69]

I use a gps’r in my 18 wheeler and I am all ways worried that it will want me to go down a street I shouldn’t be on. There have been several times I have ignored it because I didn’t like the look of where it wanted me to go. Once I decided to follow it since it was a state road and would save me some time going that way. Well it ended up I got an overlength ticket for being on that road. Should have went the way I had origanally inteded. What I worry about most following it’s directions is that I will come up on a low clearance that I can’t get under. All most all of the time there isn’t any where to turn around and you have to back out of the area and it never fails it is a busy time traffic wise when something like that happens.

[bugsmasher69]

@gotta run wrote:

Obviously he could tell the road was too narrow before turning on it, and he looks like he tried to do a Y turn after getting in trouble.

Roads do start out wide and narrow down. And if you look close at the picture there is a curve in the road there and he failed to back around it and wasn’t trying to make a Y turn.

As to why it took them five days to get it out of there is a wonder. Around here they would have had wreckers on it or a crane to lift it up and turn it around with in hours of it happening.

[Team Deejay]

You don’t have to spend too much time in England to discover that they take a bit more relaxed approach to keeping the transportation system working than we do. I’m sure the trucking company kept promising to get the truck moved “real soon now”, while they looked for some way to avoid paying the cost of doing the recovery. You are right that here, the local police would pull out the truck immediately and impound it until they were reimbursed for the recovery costs and any damages (and maybe some “auxiliary fees” for their trouble.)

[redrusty]

i don’t always trust my nuvi either…….we often go to north eastern iowa to see the better halfs dad.
once, i took the way i thought was faster, and travel time (heading on backroads from portage to spring green, and taking hwy 60 to pdc and such) netted us about 2 1/2 hrs.
the next time i “trusted” the nuvi, it took us all the way to DUBUQUE and up the river road. (just getting through dubuque is a %)@*!) total drive time was little over 3 hrs.
in summation, i still carry the delorme with me, as it only takes a few minutes to pull over and look at the mapbook.
as a side note, i can’t have the missus catch me with the delorme and nuvi in the same vehicle, or she starts in about my “expensive toys”

[zoesbrother]

Up around Navarino my GPS told me there were roads when in fact there was no road there at all.

[K0rpl]

KS9WI, and I were caching once after doing Navarino Bob. Keith’s In car nav, a Garmin Street Pilot, wanted us to Drive 11 Miles, and than make a u-Turn, and proceed to go past the Point at which it told us to travel 11 Miles. 22 Miles out of our way, I don’t be thinking so!!

[sandlanders]

Before GPS receivers there were maps.

Before that, there were (and still are) eyes and brains.

[Team Honeybunnies]

@sandlanders wrote:

Before GPS receivers there were maps.

Before that, there were (and still are) eyes and brains.

What do you do with those? I don’t get it 😉 .

[sandlanders]

With over 9000 finds, THB, I guess you have GPSr implants for eyes and brains . . . kind of like the Six Million Dollar Man (another antiquated reference).

[K0rpl]

What are Maps?? Oh, those are the thingy’s you load into your GPS, and they show you little squiggly things, right??

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