GPS vs. Lake

[mattm04]

Apparently several people are on a business trip and get a rental Mercedes. Not familiar with the area they get the GPS option. They get lost and, drive into a lake because the GPS said to.

I never realized people would actually drive into a body of water because a GPS said to. I always that that was a joke. Even if they did get insurance, i'm not so sure they will pay for a totaled Mercedes because you blindly followed the GPS.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCmFX...layer_embedded

[Caveat Emptor]

I was trying to find the famous clip from "The Office" but NBC has yanked all of them

I tried the other day to enter an address in Wheaton, MD....Garmin couldn't find Wheaton

I was driving north along VA Rt. 28 in Chantilly in the left lane because my GPS said it was a left turn ...it was an offramp...to the right

[bhskittykatt]

Whenever my GPS instructs me to get off at the HWY 20 exit from I-5 southbound, it's wrong. They redid the ramp a few years back so it comes out on the highway instead of the side street, and the GPS still hasn't figured it out.

Also, if you're heading west on HWY 20, it says take a left for Anacortes, and right to Whidbey...except that's exactly the opposite of how it's supposed to go!

I am convinced GPSs are making people more stupid. I have guests at the motel insist I give them the address to the grocery store that is literally across the street so they can put it in their GPS! And I'm finding more and more people who get confused when I pull out a road map to show them directions. Yeah, I'll just take my road map, please! I don't want to become like those people...

[drunkenwildmage]

i use a GPS, but I still will map out the place I'm going to, as a back up. I find that out GPS is about 98% accurate, but unless you have a good idea of where you are going, that other 2% is hell.

[Dreamstalker]

There was a CSI episode where a GPS was a key part of the investigation. Brass says: "My GPS told me to turn right. Had I done so I'd be coughing up fish from the bottom of Lake Mead."

We think that blindly relying on GPS is a bad idea. A friend's unit has issues with the highways in VA and will typically tell her to "at earliest convenience, make a U-turn" (or equally insane directions) when she's on the interstate. My phone's GPS got us lost in Union City NJ for an hour (we were going from Penn Station to Teaneck, dad took the wrong exit and he tried to use GPS to correct, even though I could tell him exactly where to go).

[PepperElf]

how can you NOT notice a lake. Even at night you have headlights...

[wolfie]

The most important part of learning to use a GPS is knowing when to ignore it.

One case I've seen (been a while since I've been there) is the New Jersey Turnpike. There's a "both ways" service plaza (where you can leave in the opposite direction you came in from) north of the last set of tollbooths. You can get into it from either the "cars only" lanes or the "all vehicles" lanes, but the exit northbound takes you onto the "all vehicles" lanes. When you have to make the split between I80 westbound and a tunnel to New York City, the ramps for the "all vehicles" lanes are OPPOSITE those of the "cars only" lanes (i.e. one set of lanes the left split takes you onto I80 westbound, the other set it takes you into the tunnel to NYC). Some GPS systems assume you're in the "cars only" lanes. My GPS said to take one direction, the signs said to go the other - I followed the signs and wound up where I wanted to be.

Sadly, at the approach to the Detroit end of the Ambassador Bridge, they have to have signs "Follow posted signs, not GPS" - just by looking at it, it's a construction area, so obviously the routing is likely to be more recent than the last update of a GPS database.

[Frantic Freddie]

They drove into the lake....didn't The Three Stooges do that?

[Dreamstalker]

unless you have a good idea of where you are going, that other 2% is hell.

This. Dad tried to use my GPS over Christmas in an area of NJ it turned out he was not familiar with at all. Thank Gord we had a paper map in the car.

When we got lost in Union City, he took the wrong exit from Newark (16 instead of 18 like we usually do; not sure why that happened). I was trying to tell him exactly how to get back to where we were; it didn't help that even the GPS was confused (the part of UC that we were in is a maze of one-way streets and odd turns which the unit was not aware of).

[BlaqueKatt]

why do people not understand GPS is a useful tool, but like all tools(especially electronic ones), you should have and be able to use a non electronic backup.

Every year we get news stories about people that turned down closed roads, get stuck and die, because they were "following the GPS".

GPS=/=God Protects Stupidity

[LillFilly]

That's just... So dumb. Common sense would say DON'T DRIVE INTO THE POND! Unless they thought they were driving to an invisible bridge...

[mikoyan29]

I think my best GPS moment was when I was looking for a particular lighthouse. So I put the coordinates into my GPS and my mom said, "YOu think we're going to go there?" and I said sure. We got to where the GPS led us to and it said, "Get on a ferry". I laughed at that. Although I try not to be too dependent on it as I realize it is dependent upon lots of other factors. Probably doesn't help that my maps are a couple years out of date now.