billski
Active member
I dislike using auto GPS for navigation, by just listening to the directions, I lose all sense of north and relationships to other roads. I need a real map. Just goes to show, GPS routing is still in it's adolescence; not a mature technology, and vulnerable to a lag in information flow.
Couple Follows Their GPS Into Remote Snowbound Road
On Friday, Christmas Day, John Rhoads, 65, and his wife Starry, 67, were enroute from Portland, Oregon to Reno, Nevada, when they followed the 'shortest route' recommendation on their automobile gps as it directed them onto Forest Service Road 28, near the small town of Silver lake in the remote Winema-Fremont National Forest. The couple followed their receiver for 35 miles before finally sticking their 4WD Toyota Sequoia in 16-inch deep snow on an uncleared, summer-only track.
The pair remained stuck for three days, but fortunately were prepared enough to carry food, water and warm clothes. When weather cleared on Monday they got a weak cell phone signal and called emergency numbers. Sheriff's deputies followed the phone's gps coordinates and towed them out with a winch. The moral? Don't blindly follow technology. It's amazing how many people do, while being unable to balance that information with things like...the view out their car window. Automobile GPS receivers are extremely accurate (they saved my heinie driving in Wales. U.K., even in roundabouts), but they can't incorporate info like current weather and road conditions into each routing.
Over the past decade, at least five similar events have occurred with winter drivers getting stuck in extremely remote locations like Utah's Smoky Mountain Road, remote BLM roads in the Jarbidge wilderness of Northern Nevada, and western Oregon's Bear Camp Road, where two winter strandings resulted in fatalities. One of those, in 2006 was the widely known James Kim incident, where a CNET tech blogger followed his GPS for miles up an unplowed Forest Service road, then died while trying to get help for his wife and infant son after six stranded days. Winter drivers should always carry emergency supplies, and if the road's snowy, turn around while you still can.
Source
Couple Follows Their GPS Into Remote Snowbound Road
On Friday, Christmas Day, John Rhoads, 65, and his wife Starry, 67, were enroute from Portland, Oregon to Reno, Nevada, when they followed the 'shortest route' recommendation on their automobile gps as it directed them onto Forest Service Road 28, near the small town of Silver lake in the remote Winema-Fremont National Forest. The couple followed their receiver for 35 miles before finally sticking their 4WD Toyota Sequoia in 16-inch deep snow on an uncleared, summer-only track.
The pair remained stuck for three days, but fortunately were prepared enough to carry food, water and warm clothes. When weather cleared on Monday they got a weak cell phone signal and called emergency numbers. Sheriff's deputies followed the phone's gps coordinates and towed them out with a winch. The moral? Don't blindly follow technology. It's amazing how many people do, while being unable to balance that information with things like...the view out their car window. Automobile GPS receivers are extremely accurate (they saved my heinie driving in Wales. U.K., even in roundabouts), but they can't incorporate info like current weather and road conditions into each routing.
Over the past decade, at least five similar events have occurred with winter drivers getting stuck in extremely remote locations like Utah's Smoky Mountain Road, remote BLM roads in the Jarbidge wilderness of Northern Nevada, and western Oregon's Bear Camp Road, where two winter strandings resulted in fatalities. One of those, in 2006 was the widely known James Kim incident, where a CNET tech blogger followed his GPS for miles up an unplowed Forest Service road, then died while trying to get help for his wife and infant son after six stranded days. Winter drivers should always carry emergency supplies, and if the road's snowy, turn around while you still can.
Source
