Driving with GPS....

Some years ago, there was an incident involving some luxury car going
over a ferry loading platform at high speed and landing in the river.
The driver had a GPS map and that map didn't show a ferry and though
there was a bridge...

Today, i experienced something interesting.

I was going trough a very small unpaved farm road (heading east) and
there was a huge amount of westbound traffic on it, including many cars
from ontario (I am in Québec). Then, when I reached the end of the road,
I saw all the cars were coming from the south and many of them turning
onto that small road, while the others would keep going north where they
would intersect with a main arterial east-west road.


Turns out that the main highway was closed due to some accident and some
were venturing onto farm roads to try to go around it.

I kept wondering why some "foreigners" would turn into a small farm road
that ran for only about 4km when a main arterial road just a few hundred
metres to the north ran all the way to the ontario border (and was paved
all the way :-)


The only conclusion I can come with is that there were some equipped
with GPS and the GPS unit would have decided to tell them to trun left
at the next intersection, either intentionally leading them onto a small
road, or mistakenly leading them on that intersection when it was really
the next one where they should have turned left. And clueless drivers
behind them would follow those clueless leaders :-)

JF Mezei wrote:


Interesting!

JF Mezei wrote:

The moral seems to be that our brain is far more powerful than the GPS, but
we knew that anyway, didn't we?

I guess that's why a colleague of mine has coined the term "Prat Nav." for
his, and others', in car GPS units.

Keith

JF Mezei on 04/07/2006 wrote:


This sounds very much like an urban myth. If it isn't then surely there
would have been some indication he was coming up to a ferry such as big
road signs, ferry fees displayed, Cues of traffic etc. Sounds like the
driver got exactly what was coming to him and should be banned for life
for such reckless behaviour.

--
Rob

http://www.flickr.com/photos/canopus_archives/