Don't rely on your satnav

[saphena]

The BBC reports this tale of woe and misery this morning involving an American gentleman who sadly died while following the pink line.

"Tragically, as he drove cautiously in the darkness and rain, he unsuspectingly followed Google's outdated directions to what his family later learned for nearly a decade was called the 'Bridge to Nowhere,' crashing into Snow Creek, where he drowned."

"Our girls ask how and why their daddy died, and I'm at a loss for words they can understand because, as an adult, I still can't understand how those responsible for the GPS directions and the bridge could have acted with so little regard for human life," his wife, Alicia Paxson, said in a statement.

 

[JohnR]

Tragic. Google needs a 'Map Share' feature like TomTom has.

 

[owl*]

It's also tragic that warning barriers to stop this happening were vandalised & removed.

 

[Shawn K]

That's a sad and unfortunate turn of events. As I say to my commercial drivers on practically a daily basis, "Never turn on a GPS and turn off your brain."

I'm sure that any lawsuit brought against Google will involve a defense lawyer making the case that the driver still bears responsibility for the safe operation of the vehicle.

 

[Auburn]

Tragic, but the driver is responsible to operate the vehicle safely. This sounds more like a gene pool cleansing event than a Google screw up. Lawyers hoping for a settlement and hustling a grieving family.

 

[EricV]

Google Maps, (not a Sat-Nav), has led people astray with lethal consequences many times. Sending drivers up a non-maintained road in winter as "shortest route" past a gate that was supposed to be closed and locked, but got left open.

Actual Sat-Navs do this stuff all the time, sending you down a muddy goat path to cut the corner on a main road that may be "shorter", but makes no sense. And the 12 year old mapping programmers don't drive yet, so they can't program simple 'If, Then" statements to avoid this, (and don't understand why they should). Worse, the Sat-Navs like to zoom in at turns, making it all the more difficult for you to see their errors on the screen.

Sat-Navs could be so much better if the programmers actually had brains and were taught to use them.

Until then it's up to the end user to think and know where they are going before they get themselves into trouble. It's a tool, not something to blindly follow.

 

[Firstpeke]

GPS - Gravel Positioning System.....

I can't begin to tell you the number of people who have admitted to me that they have turned onto a s street and ended up being where they shouldn't.... because the satnav said so....
A total lack of observation and common sense, which as we know appears to have totally gone out of vogue these days.

I just acquired and carried out 3 years of updates to my car nav system.... all 56Gb worth..... didn't cost a thing and was the best information obtained from an independent Volvo dealer in Glasgow.
Simply go to Volvo website, UK for me, not sure about other locations,, go to support and then downloads, find maps and follow the links!

If only I had known..... but franchised dealers don't always want you to know such things!

 

[saphena]

A car was left jammed in a narrow footpath in a seaside town for a week after two tourists went the wrong way using sat-nav.

The driver managed to wedge the new Nissan Juke between two walls near the RNLI station in Tenby, Pembrokeshire.

The mechanic who helped get it out said the American women blamed their sat-nav before abandoning the car and catching a train to their hotel.

 

[GarminDave]

Luckily I’ve been married for 50+ happy years and accept I’ll never understand how my wife’s brain works. So it was easy to realise my SatNag, with women’s voice directions, does not function with the same navigational decision algorithms I’d use.
I ride with Google Maps on my iPhone and Garmin 595 plus my rational decision making and so far so good in getting where I want to be but not always the way I want to go!
So much better than when I first started riding though