The dangers of relying too much on GPS/Satnav

[FPAlpha]

Sign of our times that people believe in technology so blindly and stop thinking themselves.

I'm glad my dad used to train me to be self realiant.. he would need something in another part of town (that was way back in the 80s) but instead of jumping in the car and get it he would call me up, open the city map and show me where it was.. grab your bike, here's the cash and off you go.

Sometimes i got lost but then i asked someone if they knew where the store was and i always found it in the end.

That seems to be lost with people.. i have seen so many pictures of cars ending up in rivers/lakes, tops torn off trucks by a too low bridge etc to have any sympathy for these people.

 

[Owain Taggart]

I imagine they can be useful for a city that has lots of one-ways. One-ways can be like mazes, and can be difficult to navigate unless you've spent years living in the city.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

Lets say you live on one side of a country and you need to visit a place on the other side of the country. A Sat Nav is very useful for finding a specific location within a city.

I've been socially inadequate long enough, I have found my way easily without asking anyone long before GPS navigation was popular. I don't need it now to improve the situation.

All you need is to locate the destination on the map before leaving. You can do it online, you can look it up on your paper map, you can use your GPS navigation program – the three work the same way. That's independent from the voice of the lady telling you to turn around at the next intersection or go through the middle of the corn field. Then, finding your way... now, that's a problem for first graders!

I imagine they can be useful for a city that has lots of one-ways. One-ways can be like mazes, and can be difficult to navigate unless you've spent years living in the city.

Only if the map knows the direction of one-ways. If it doesn't, well, the traffic police would also like to hear how your iPhone disagrees with their clumsy road signs! If I was in charge, I would change the direction weekly just to have some fun with those.

 

[Lindley]

One skill every pilot needs is knowing how to use all information available at any given time. It's called Cockpit Resource Management.

The same could be said for drivers. If you have a GPS, great, use it! It's a source of information. But it's not the only one, and you need to be paying attention enough to other data points to be able to identify when something isn't right.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

Wouldn't turning off voice navigation help greatly with that?

 

[MacLeod]

I was just about to say you can disable the voice. As for City Maps what are you supposed to do carry around the hundreds or so you need?

I've had to do a lot of driving for work and Sat Nav made it so much easier to find exactly where I wanted withing in a town/city. Sure I would look at a map before I set off and plan out how I would get to a particular town/city. The Sat Nav was more about finding the specific location within that City. Otherwise I would have had to carry around dozens/hundreds of city maps. Which isn't really feasable or cost effective.

 

[sojourner]

One skill every pilot needs is knowing how to use all information available at any given time. It's called Cockpit Resource Management.

I thought that was called Situational Awareness?

 

[Lindley]

One skill every pilot needs is knowing how to use all information available at any given time. It's called Cockpit Resource Management.

I thought that was called Situational Awareness?

That's certainly valuable too. The two concepts are strongly related.

 

[spooky spice]

Does the sat-nav gizmo know what sort of vehicle it's in?

 

[sojourner]

^That would be "self awareness" and much too advanced for a gps unit.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

My online routing has walking, bike and car mode. If the maps contained information about your kind of transport, you could always add a mode for it and the software will still work. The extension should be trivial. You could also choose your pick your route by hand before starting, or even create it manually.

Of course, when it comes to just logging my tracks, it knows everything about my vehicle, so it knows that I'm travelling in a balloon if I tell it that I am. How could that be useful I don't know. I was thinking about developing transport auto-detection using GPS speed, acceleration and accelerometer data. It won't be difficult to create patterns for the most popular kinds of transport and recognize them.

 

[Sean Aaron]

I wouldn't spend money on SatNav myself, but I have found the iPhone's built-in map/route-planner thing pretty handy for traveling to places where I have no familiarity at all. I do make it a point to have a paper map to hand, however.

I have been in a car with someone who put faith in one of those things only to end up in neighbourhood across the motorway (with no bridge in sight) from the training facility we were meant to be in after dismissing my suggestion of plotting a route using a map. Lots of fun! In this case the map was accurate, but the SatNav was crap at interpreting it and plotted a route that wasn't possible unless we were on foot a century ago.

 

[Finn]

That's pretty awesome. We have several bridges around here that are too short for semi trucks, and the trucks regularly get stuck inside them. Often, it completely rips the top off of the truck.

I never thought that it might have something to do with them following their GPS, but that would make a lot of sense, considering there are warning signs all over the place that trucks don't fit.

This has been happening since long before there was GPS.

 

[RobertVA]

Near where I live the state has sensors that make alarms and flashing light go off when an over-height vehicle is a couple of miles from a tunnel. Occasionaly an operator ignores the opportunity to take an alternate route and has to be stopped immediately before entering the tunnel, which requires completely stopping all traffic in both directions to turn them around. Even a brief stop results in several miles of backed up traffic (during some periods it's a very busy facility).

 

[YellowSubmarine]

To not just ignore all road signs, but a couple of miles of warning lights, and to have the entire traffic stopped because of your stupidity, you're definitely a highlight in human stupidity. And definitely not at the right job. People who can't drive shouldn't drive, let alone work as truck drivers.

Why is it that in all jobs the management chooses people utterly incompetent at their jobs – I know this is true for drivers, programmers, journalists and doctors... What the hell is that?

 

[Sean Aaron]

Why is it that in all jobs the management chooses people utterly incompetent at their jobs – I know this is true for drivers, programmers, journalists and doctors... What the hell is that?

I expect it has something to do with hiring the best you can whilst also paying the least possible.

 

[RobertVA]

It's not unusual for shipping companies in this part of the world to only purchase trailers to carry standardized shipping containers and hire independent tractor owners to tow the trailers from the port to the shipment's final destination. Many of these "independent contractors" are single driver/single truck operations, so there are probably cases where the driver is the management. Obviuosly very many fines for ignoring the signs, alarm bells, flashing lights and subsequently bypassing the inspection station aren't conductive to their business's financial success.

I wouldn't rule out the tunnel, which doesn't have quite as much clearance as most newer tunnels and other overhead obstructions, being high enough for standard containers but not for the occasional special load that's higher than normal. To make matters worse, traffic is often bad in the tunnel because of auto operators that have trouble maintaining speed in the confined space (it "feels" like your going faster than you really are in there).