An interesting - though rather long - article about the issue of over-reliance on GPS-based navigation devices.
The article starts and ends with an amazing story of a Canadian couple headed to Las Vegas: They got lost following GPS directions in Nevada; car got stuck on a rough road, husband walked for help, wife stayed with car. He didn’t make it; she survived 49 days until found by hunters.
My Beloved’s GPS once told us to make an illegal U-turn-and it actually said “IN ONE BLOCK MAKE ILLEGAL U-TURN”. This same GPS program once told us, when we were on the interstate and had missed our exit, to take the next exit, circle around, and go back up the same ramp the wrong way into oncoming freeway traffic!.
Tell me again how wonderful it will be when all the cats on the road are 100% automated and therefor unable to make mistakes.
Ancient IT Mantra:
GIGO
Garbage In; Gospel Out.
p.s. - are these “another idiot dies by relying on GPS instructions” still News?
Attn: Ric Romero!
Is this a whoosh? Sat Navs commonly say “Make a legal U-turn”, which I have actually witnessed people to mishear as “Make illegal U-Turn”.
Are you SURE that’s what it said? That isn’t standard English - and my GPS says something similar - but what it says is “In one block make a legal u-turn”.
The first time I heard it - I thought it said “illegal”, but I’ve heard it many times since say “a legal”
Mine is in car GPS - which they disable when driving as they are scared of lawsuits. I would think most manufactures would shy away from encouraging “illegal” activity.
We’d better watch out because once the mice and rats are gone, the automated cats will come for us. Listen and understand! Automated cats can’t be bargained with. They can’t be reasoned with. They won’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And they absolutely will not stop, ever, until everything that moves is dead.
Of course, I suppose we could just mount red lasers on towers for them to chase until their cat batteries run down.
But I digress…
GPS is very convenient, but you can’t trust it implicitly. The maps are getting better, I don’t end up on dead end streets as often as I did 10 years ago, but when visiting rural schools, I am still likely to end up at a cow pasture rather than a parking lot.
Easy to see how that couple could end up how they did.
I try to keep my brain engaged with what makes sense as I go with GPS. If it directs me down a dirt road, I’m going to pass that and see whether it really wants me to turn around or if it gives me another option further down the paved road. If it still wants me to go the sketchy way, I’m still going to stop and check with someone who might know better than I, whether that’s making a phone call, checking a different mapping system, or a local business.
Compared to the infallibility of human drivers?
Heck, this has been pretty much true of just about every “manual” cat I’ve ever known.
From what I understand, even in their natural state, cats don’t make mistakes. It’s every one else’s fault.
Are you suggesting Donald Trump is a cat? Might explain the hair-ball…
Having read the article, I think GPS is being unfairly maligned. Here are some quotes:
So the couple used a road map (not GPS), made an assumption about a connecting road and finally used GPS only to reach a nearby town.
Why didn’t they use GPS from the start?
Also I’m rather suspicious about how the article states what decisions the couple made. The article implies that the couple, their van and their GPS have never been found.
I am imagining that entire thread about driverless cars, edited to replace all mention of “cars” with “cats”.
The woman survived – that is why we know what happened (or at least what she remembers happening).
Automated [strike]cats[/strike] cars don’t have to be perfect, only better than people as drivers. One would probably not have tried the “scenic route”. But yes, automated systems need to rely on more than GPS (actually GPS per se is quite reliable – it is the road database that more troublesome)
Brian
The code you were looking for is [del]
Yes, it needs to be able to just drive by recognizing what a road looks like. But this is what they do isn’t it? I don’t think the Google cars are reliant on GPS and map databases. If they are then there will be problems for people trying to get to their new house in a new subdivision that isn’t in the database yet.
naw, it should be okay…just hope that the new subdivision has plenty of cats.
I assumed he was just using retro slang, i.e. hepcats.
I agree with Glee, I’m not sure how you can call that ‘death by GPS’, when the couple actually made their bad decisions themselves using a map and only used GPS to find a town name. The GPS took them to the town just fine, and didn’t have anything to do with their decision to start driving down random desert roads at night or avoid the town that they knew was a safe place to stay. If you are going to avoid well-traveled roads, especially somewhere with a hostile environment (the name “Death Valley” should be a hint), you should really have some idea what you’re doing. If you’re clueless, stay on the interstates and major highways, avoid ‘shortcuts’ through unfamiliar land, and you’ll do much better.
Yes, I think that “Death, attributable in part to naive over-reliance on GPS guidance” would be a more accurate title for the linked article.