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PostPosted: Fri Jan 01, 2010 12:10 pm 
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:shock: here's a story about another couple beleaving the gps gods directions.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,581 ... latestnews


GPS Leads 3 Parties Astray in Oregon
Friday, January 01, 2010
Associated Press

PORTLAND, Ore. — In a holiday hurry, Jeramie Griffin piled his family into the car and asked his new GPS for the quickest way from his home in the Willamette Valley across the Cascade Range.

It said he could shave 40 minutes off the time of the roundabout route he usually takes to the in-laws' place.

Following the directions, he and his wife headed east on Christmas Eve and into the mountains, turning off a state highway onto local roads and finally getting stuck in the snow.

They had no cell phone service and ran short on formula for their 11-month-old daughter. After taking exploratory hikes, trying to dig out and spending the night in their car, the distraught couple filmed a goodbye video.

Like two other parties of holiday travelers who followed GPS directions smack into Oregon snowbanks, Griffin and family were eventually rescued. But their peril left law enforcement officers and travel advisers perplexed about drivers who occasionally set aside common sense when their GPS systems suggest a shortcut.

"Did everybody just get these for Christmas?" asked Klamath County Sheriff Tim Evinger, leader of one rescue effort.

In Griffin's case, in fact, the GPS device was a Christmas gift, from his parents. He used it for the first time to plan the trip to Central Oregon.

It's one he'd made many times before, following a route travelers have found reliable since at least the days of the Oregon Trail. But, he said, a shortcut the GPS device suggested was attractive.

"We were in such a hurry to get over there, we programmed it in the driveway and went ahead," he said.

In hindsight, he said, he should have double checked the route against a paper map — and packed extra formula for the baby. "We would be better prepared for the unknown," he said.

The AAA and the National Association for Search and Rescue say they don't sense a surge in trips that go amiss because of a blind reliance on GPS directions, but they hear about them from time to time.

"It's usually about every other month," said Christie Hyde of the national travel association AAA. It's a small number compared with the millions of GPS units in service, she said.

She's heard, she said, of one driver who made a right turn as directed and had to be towed off railroad tracks, and another party led near the edge of a cliff.

In Oregon, GPS systems can direct drivers to thousands of miles of Forest Service logging roads that lace the state's mountain ranges. In the winter, they are often plugged with snow.

On Christmas Day, a Nevada couple took one such road in Evinger's County and spent three days stuck. They were rescued when a break in atmospheric conditions allowed them to signal their coordinates to 911.

Three Portlanders and their small dog got into trouble Monday when their vehicle slid off a forest road as they were using GPS directions to a hot springs in the southern Willamette Valley. Lane County officials said the three and the dog were exhausted and mildly hypothermic after walking 17 miles without survival gear to get into cell phone range and call 911.

Griffin's family was rescued when friends and relatives used a GPS like Griffin's and duplicated the route they assumed the family had plotted. That led them straight to the family. The three had been stuck about 24 hours.

Evinger recalled that within the last year in his county a hunter in a pickup followed GPS instructions along a powerline road and got stuck in a marsh, and travelers in a car got stuck in snow when they turned onto a Forest Service road that had been closed and converted to use for snowmobiles.

But, he said, it isn't as if people have just started getting lost in the woods. "In yesteryear, it was people not knowing how to read their maps," he said.

Evinger said the statewide task force on search and rescue he chairs will take up the question of GPS-led trips next week. He said it probably would focus on educational efforts rather than legislation.

Law enforcement officials and travel experts have a variety of recommendations for people who use GPS in the winter or in strange territory:

Use an old-fashioned paper map as a backup. Pack a survival kit for the winter. Configure your GPS for "highways only," or a similar setting, so that you don't get directed to byways in the winter. Top off your gasoline tank, and charge your cell phone batteries before going into remote areas. Pay attention to the weather.

"Our devices don't know what the weather is," said Jessica Myers, spokeswoman for GPS manufacturer Garmin. "It's the responsibility of the driver to exercise common sense."

Several officials recommended zooming out from GPS displays that focus on the stretch ahead. A wider view can point to better highways for a safer, if lengthier, drive. It can also jog a driver's mindset by offering a "full, bird's-eye view of the area around you," said Marie Dodds, spokeswoman for the AAA's Oregon and Idaho organization.

The most common advice was high in "duh" content:

"You can't follow GPS blindly," said Hyde of the national AAA.

Says Dodds: "If you are following your GPS and all of a sudden you find yourself in the middle of nowhere with snow all around, don't go there. Turn around."

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PostPosted: Sun Jan 03, 2010 11:13 am 
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Location: Henderson, NV
GPS is a great advantage to someone who knows how to use it.

Anyone leaving familar territory should have the skills to navigate to, through, and back from their destination as well as have the necessary items to survive the trip, even if something went wrong, including a backup plan.

Common sense, or the lack of it, is sometimes a very effective source of chlorine in a gene pool.

Too bad that we as human beings feel it necessary to 1) attempt to save fools, and 2) restrict our own freedoms to prevent fools from doing stupid stuff.

Now as a "teaching club", and given that more folks use gps than anything else wouldn't it be worthwhile to maybe get some of our more experienced GPS users (I think they call themselves goe-cachers) to offer the rest of us a little "how to use a GPS" trail run. And just for grins, we could bring along some parchment paper maps and a sexton! :wink:

Just a thought -

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PostPosted: Sun Jan 03, 2010 5:17 pm 
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I've been using my GPS for trail runs for a long time. I've never had an issue. But then again, my planning starts with the GPS maps on my home computer, and me planning the route the way I want to go to the destination I have picked. Then I lay the route on Google Earth and check the trails from above at the same time checking my hardcopy topo maps to get an idea of the lay of the land so to speak. Then I stick to the route I mapped out. I don't let the GPS map my route.

I think the time these folks get themselves into trouble is when they actually let the GPS find their route as they are driving or before they leave...without checking it out first. They don't have an actual route programmed into their unit prior to departure, or they get in a location and let the GPS find a way. The GPS units that have road mapping are great for actual roads, but probably not as good for off road, so stick to main roads and highways. When in doubt, check it out.

And also, common sense or just be smart about it, would help too. One time I took my sister to see Zion NP. I had a trail that I mapped that went north through the Kolob Terrace past a lake at 8,000 ft elevtion and up toward Cedar City if I remember correctly. It was October and little did I know there would be over a foot of snow up at that elevation. I had the common sense, even though I wanted to do that trail, to turn around and go back before the snow got too deep. I don't know what makes people keep going when things appear to be getting worse.

So, I don't blame the GPS as much as I blame the person using it. Don't get yourself in a spot where you can't get out. Have some common sense and have a route that follows good roads and stick to it. Quit allowing a GPS to plan your route or at least check it before you commit to it.


That's my 2 cents and that's all I have to say about that. :mrgreen:

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PostPosted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 4:38 pm 
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Location: Winnemucca, NV
In the old days, people got lost with paper maps as well. So you can't blame it entirely on GPS or TomToms or NuVi's and the like. People get lost, plain and simple.

However, I do see a trend in that people think their navigation devices - be it a map based, hand held GPS, or built in navigation system - as infallable. And they follow them beyond reason if things turn bad.

Some people just simply tend to be unprepared or under prepared for trips. Be it they have a paper map, AAA map, Benchmark Atlas or electronic devices. They don't plan and study their route, they don't set up their GPS or navigation devices properly - they just follow them right out of the box with all settings in default mode. And they are simply too gullible to their misleadings if they tell the traveller and his sedan automobile to go down a two track, snow covered cow path deep in a forest.

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PostPosted: Fri Jan 08, 2010 8:33 am 
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Very well put David.

It seems an unfortunate trend in our society. 1) most tend to rely on "things" like gps & cell phones, and 2) when stuff goes wrong they want to blame the "things".

The safest tools are dangerous in the hands of fools.

A Sergeant Major I worked for had a saying he ground into us: "Prior Proper Planning Prevents Pi$$ Poor Performance". It was a continuation of what my father and grandfather had started teaching me as a kid. I've never been able to forget that lesson, and I consider myself fortunate to have been taught it.

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PostPosted: Fri Jan 08, 2010 11:38 am 
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I'ts indicative of how dependant society, in general, it on technology. I know a bunch of folks who know all about the latest gadget, have the newest fad device and so on, yet have alarmingly few solid low tech skills. Not surprisingly, they tend to prefer to stay indoors and play on computers and game systems. Nothing wrong with that per se, but when it's to the exclusion to all else, I think they are the poorer for it. I'll pit my Foxfire books against their C++ books any day! ^_^


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