This thread mentions that people have been led astray by their GPS units, to the point that some have wound up stranded after their GPS sent them down some abandonded logging/forestry road.
Has anything like this ever happened to you?
I’ve never had any such experience (owing to the fact that I don’t own a GPS, probably), but Mammahomie has. She and Stepdaddyhomie were driving from [some place on the US side of the border] to [some place on the Canadian side of the border], on their way to a B&B at which they had reservations. The journey was about 20 miles as the crow flies, but their GPS sent them on a wild goose chase that took them two hours down some pretty iffy roads. When they checked in the innkeeper told them that this happens all the time. When they checked out he gave them pencil and paper directions to get back to the US; this time it took 25 minutes.
A few weeks ago I was staying with a friend in southern PA. The closest airport was Baltimore, about an hour and a half drive south. She picked me up at the airport, then let the GPS guide us to the saved location called “home.” We figured that since the GPS was borrowed from her roommate, it would take us to within a reasonable distance of their driveway.
So we left the airport, and were driving and driving and driving, and this feels an awful lot like going south. Before we knew it, I spotted a sign that said “Welcome to Washington DC.” Yeah, that’s south.
So we reprogrammed it with her address, and long story short, it took us three and a half hours to get home.
That night I asked her roommate what “home” was in the unit. She had no idea. She got the unit from a reposessed car. She was pretty sure that the guy they reposessed it from lived in DC, though.
Nothing bad happened, but: a few months ago, as I was driving home from a seminar several hours away from my home, my GPS went completely bonkers. I was on a straight road, between towns, no turn-offs, and for some reason the GPS decided that the road curved away to the left. When I failed to follow the non-existent left curve, it decided that I was offroad, in the middle of a field or something. It was deeply confused for several minutes, and then the road curved back in from the left, resuming its normal course, and all was well. Really weird.
Looking for a Taco Mayo in Harrah, OK, I eventually found myself in Turkmenistan.
That’s what it felt like anyways. It directed me to a road that either didn’t exist yet, or existed at some time in the past. Nothing but trees and cows. (Perfect for a cookout, now that I think about it.)
One was a user error. We’d gone to Florida and were staying in Winter Garden, Dad programmed it for Winter Gardens… We stopped in front of the Fawlty Towers Motel and the GPS told us we were at our destination… Uh, nope. Step-mom got a bit grumpy about that.
Another time I was going to Hay Lakes for a family reunion. A blink and you’ll miss it sort of place. Thankfully someone who knew where they were going told me which turn off to take as my GPS didn’t recognize the ring road at that time. It was fun turning around though, a new area with no street lights up yet, just a four way stop and you had to cross 3 lanes… That was still in the city though, no problems otherwise!
That’s the sort of thing my gps does. Little quirky things but not leaving me too badly off.
I had one make me late for a job interview. I always leave myself PLENTY of extra time when I go to an interview, but getting there 30 minutes early doesn’t help if the GPS insists that your destination is a wooded area next to the highway with no parking and no buildings.
I actually had to call for directions, and got there late. Somehow I got the job (a great job that I still have!) but I was pissed at the time.
In the past I always drove to the location of the interview one or two days before just to make sure I could find it but I stupidly figured, hey I have GPS now, I’ll find it with no problem! :smack: I’ve learned that lesson.
After some experimentation I determined that the only way it would find that location was if I entered the latitude and longitude from Google maps. Otherwise it wanted to go to that other spot.
Not specifically a GPS horror story, but a problem with internet directions, as related by Snopes.
Several years ago if you went to MSN’s MapPoint service and requested a route from Trondheim, Norway to Haugesund, Norway it gave you the direct route between the two cities, a distance of about 476 miles.
But if you reversed the cities and asked for directions from Haugesund to Tronheim, it told you to take the ferry to Scotland, drive to London and take the Chunnel to France, and then drive through France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Denmark and Sweden to get back to Trondheim.
Apparently they have a lot of one-way roads in Europe.
I’ve had mine tell me to go the wrong way down one way streets and tell me to turn right/left when there was a wall instead of a road there. But I always overruled it.
The worst it has done for me is when I would be looking for a place and it doesn’t recognize either the name or the address, that sucks.
Not exactly GPS, but memorable. I needed to get to Durant Road Nature Park for a retreat that started around 5pm on a Friday in December. So I used Google Maps, and faithfully followed the instructions to take the highway, then go through a couple neighborhoods. But when I found myself in an area of dark warehouses surrounded by empty semis, I started to worry. But then I came to a woodsy area and regained hope. I followed the instructions . . . right up to a chain-blocked road marked for use by park personnel only. Turns out the real entrance was about 20 degrees further along the perimeter, reached by a totally different and more sane route. I arrived in pitch dark, which made unpacking my car and transporting my stuff to the cabin really difficult.
There was a hell of a mess out here a couple years ago when a semi driver followed his GPS down Crawford Mtn Road from 15 to 550. Take a close look at the scale on that map, and keep in mind that the slope on this road is about 40-ish degrees on the flatter parts. I personally would hate to take anything as big as a minivan down it. Astoundingly enough, dude made it to the bottom before he jackknifed trying to turn onto 550.
But at least the GPS got him into town right enough. When we moved up here, I was totally unfamiliar with the area and we were coming up mostly through 2-lane blacktop, so I printed off Mapquest directions to guide me and the critters when we came along a few hours behind DoctorJ. It was all very detailed and accurate and helpful, until I got to the last page. It got me to a town the next county over and then just said “turn left” and some distance later arrive at the destination. No mention of what road I should turn left on to get to our town, no turns after I hit our town, no nothing. Just “turn left.”
There was a road sign indicating the turn I should take, and then after that I was on my own. The new phone wasn’t working yet, I was thoroughly turned around, it was midnight and I’d been up and running since 4:30 am and had several fights with the movers and nearly lost a cat. I wound up driving in circles for I don’t know how long before I ran a red light turning around and got pulled over. The cop felt so bad for me he not only didn’t write me a ticket, he looked the address and led me to the house.
This is a current story on the Canadian news - woman found after being stranded in Nevada wilderness for seven weeks. When the story first came out, I said to my husband, “How do you get that lost?!? Did they follow their GPS into the ass end of nowhere or something?” Well, pretty much. Jim and I take car trips all the time and we’ve never even been CLOSE to that lost.
How about wandering around the german autobahn system with a GPS that is giving directions in german, while a romanian is trying to get it to change to english on the way to Ramstein for some takeout fried chicken :eek:
[Well we got it to British instead of American, at least I know how to convert kilometers to miles. Then it got us lost in Holland :smack:]
I know lots of cartographers and GIS analysts/specialists. I trust quality maps. I also own a vehicle GPS and a hiking GPS. I trust my hiking GPS, even on the road, over my vehicle GPS.
I’ve never been led astray with my hiking GPS, but several times with my vehicle GPS.
:eek: