Comments on: Getting lost with a GPS? Unfortunately, yes

For any other directionally challenged couples out there, a cautionary tale: read the fine print before letting the device lead you through hill and dale.

[BirdDog01]

The nav system in a rental took attendees at a relatives funeral through a private, unpaved and unmaintained, lane--essentially off road. It did eventually get them there.

I have checked, and the online map services give the same directions.

They also think that a sewer right of way near my home is a road.

[Lerianis]

Hey, that's nothing.... the road I am on, that has existed for 40+ years.... it isn't even in most GPS systems! Mapquest has it, Google Maps has it.... but not 1 out of 10 GPS's I tested at our local "Best Buy". None of them... something tells me the people making the maps for these things need a HIT IN THE HEAD.

[ImRob]

Reminds me of a trip the wife and I made in Aus last year.

The GPS, instead of sending us via a major highway, decided instead to send us on the most twisty, turny, narrow road I've ever been on in my life. The occasional house and non-stop countryside, punctuated only by sheer drops off the side of the road.

The missus, who was driving, was literally in hysterics by the end of this hour long part of the drive, not least because of the loose gravel road and its lack of barriers on the sides, but also because of the idiot in the 4x4 who decided to tailgate us at the speed limit, while we were constantly skidding on the gravel surface, with nowhere to pull over and literally facing one hell of a drop down the side of a very steep hill.

You can imagine our happiness at reaching the end of this particular road, only to be told to drive down another very similar looking road, kindly marked "4 Wheel Drives Only" (or similar), that would take another hour or two to drive down.

Being that we weren't driving a 4 wheeler, we decided to program the GPS in to take the nearest road, which just so happened to be a major highway. My wife, in tears by that point, was literally over the moon (NOT!) to be told that we'd then have to back track about 40 minutes back down the road we'd just been desperate to get off.

From that point on, we knew the 'paved roads' option didn't work and that the GPS wasn't to be trusted.

[bigcrank]

Stupid article.

[dellayhallberg]

well these tales are certainly horrifying...but in garmins defense...i recently purchased the budget version...navi 200...to help navigate my new st louis surroundings...and i gotta tell you...it hasn't failed us yet...perhaps we do not get to our destination in the absolute peak traffic/route conditions possible...how the hell would anyone know?? if you know a better way...er...use it? i always blithey pull into my destination...albeit possibly not the most efficient route...but i get there...so i will give up some of my invaluable time to spend at least MOST of my time on the road pointed in the right direction...

[Nocturnex]

uh dude st louis is layed out like a grid.

eventually no matter what route you take your gonna get there. hell i could think of no less that 8 ways to get to my old high school and it was only a mile from my house.

[oldmessage]

C'mon guys. Using a GPS device is realy no brain surgery. If you enter **** you enter up on a **** road.
I am using a GPS since 1998 (yeah there where Fishfinder with a different Map then) and yes I got onto back country roads with them once in awhile, but now with TMC and intelligent Road assistance even a 5 year old could and will use these devices.
So get use to it.
TJ

[hardedge]

Charlie, you've just discovered why Garmin included the word "recalculating" in the vocabulary of all its GPS modules.

[Dalkorian]

LOL - no, I'd say he neglected to learn that lesson.

Look folks, a GPS is nothing more than a passenger studying a map. S/He might say something like "hey, this road looks interesting and cuts straight to where we're going", but it's up to the driver to decide to trust that advice or not. He had the option to keep going and not take that first off ramp, in which case the Garmin would have uttered that phrase ("recalculating route ...") and found a more typical "frequently traveled" path.

People need to start learning to accept responsibilities for their own actions. The GPS didn't make you get lost (in more than one way - you got there following it's directions didn't you??), you got lost on your own (again, not really since you got there) - despite having someone tell you where to go. It's more accurate to say you *FELT* lost with the GPS because you didn't know the path it was taking you down, but you were trusting it anyway. That's not the GPS's fault!

[terminalblue]

i love my GPS, I even but a handle bar mount so i can use it when on my bicycle. however, its not th best when biking in downtown chicago. it often would tell you to turn a block or two late, if you were under EL tracks it would still work, but it would never e able to initialize if you just turn it on, and it often et confusd in turns and think that i turned around. understanding that the 26X's were never really designed for inner city cycling, i still love the performance i get from it.

[mkuk71]

gotta laugh. the only people who get stuck using a gps are the ones who ignore the signs on the road. Why would anyone go down a road that was clearly marked 4x4's only if they're not in a 4x4 vehicle? Reminds me of a couple of stories of sorry excuses for professional drivers here in the UK. The main one involving a tourist bus that got stuck between 2 houses on a sharp-turning country lane because he blithely ignored the 'not suitable vehicles wider than...' sign a quarter-mile back.

Sat Nav units are not the salvation of the driver. they are a tool like any other and should only be used with a certain amount of common sense installed in the driver themselves.

[ToddWBeaver]

My Garmin NUVI has a setting whether or not to includes trails in the routes it suggests.

[Georgia in MS]

I love my Nuvi. I've bought them for friends and family, too. There are times when you might be in a city where a small street may have been changed to one way and the Nuvi tells you go turn down that street. Obviously, you can't turn there, but you keep on driving and the Nuvi "recalculates."

The thing that most proves the point of GPS to me -- When I drove into DC last year, the Nuvi took me directly to my hotel near Dupont Circle. No missed turns, no being lost, late afternoon traffic.

You can also use them as directory assistance for phone numbers, find businesses, how far is it to the next gas station, etc.

The most important thing to remember is it depends on how current the map is. As far as finding businesses, I believe they have to pay to be listed. There may be a Ruby Tuesday staring you in the face but not on the GPS - maybe it was not there at mapping time or maybe they did not pay to be listed.

When taking a trip that is a long drive with a late arrival, I double check with yahoo or mapquest. If those directions are different than the Nuvi, I print them out. That way, when I am tired and the Nuvi might fail me, I have a backup.

GPS devices are not perfect and do require some common sense, but they sure beat the old way of using maps or getting LOST.

[Penguinisto]

Heh - GPS is a nice thing, but nothing beats a current local map, folks. :)

[Lerianis]

Guess again.... those 'current local maps' can be just as out of date as a GPS. Believe me: after my friends house, that is on a road that has been around since 1930..... wasn't in a map in another friend's car.... I realized that maps are crap in this country.

[viper396]

Wanna bet? The information on those "current local maps" you refer to are often obtained from the same sources and databases used by GPS manufacturers.

[drmikeusa]

I am guessing that you did not read the instructions. At least on my Tom Tom, it specifically says that "shortest route" is not "quickest route". What you wanted was the "quickest route". It even points out that some roads are not paved. Also, unless your GPS has some way of incorporating current traffic information, it can't know where traffic is going to slow you up. Like any tool, learning how to use it and knowing it's abilities are key.

[Remo_Williams]

All GPS routes should be checked in an overview mode that calc's trip time AND distance. I'd be surprised if the shortest distance didn't also calc the trip time as well.

Looking at your overall route is a driver responsibility. Would you join a team at work where, each day or even each hour, your boss came by and told you what you were doing for the next forty-five minutes? If you're in the military, the answer is "sir, yes sir". If you're not... you're probably used to getting a nice overview of the basic plot and the important (way)points.

I wouldn't place blame on the GPS unit as much as the unfortunate author. Bravo for illustrating the folly without your own experience, though, that takes courage.

-R

[trisha_k]

We have a very simple GPS (a Mio), and decided to use it for a long trip to San Antonio. The GPS did a great job, but when we realized it wasn't taking the way we had mapped out in our heads (or recalling what we saw on Mapquest), we proceeded to take the route we felt most comfortable. The GPS would simply "recalculate" its route.

With this said...the funnest part of the GPS we found was the pronunciation of street names. Some were so funny, we couldn't help but LOL. However, the funniest was when we were going down a few FM roads in New Braunfels, Texas (FM roads are Farm to Market)...and, the GPS kept saying, "Federation of Micronesia." I was amazed that the Mio took us from Texas to Micronesia in less than a day! :)

[brian.lee]

I own a nuvi as well, it works great in the city.... questionable outside it'll get you there but for some reason it loves to take "unmaintained" dirt roads outside the city instead of following the paved ones.... I wish it has options like "only use maintained roads"... it's got options for exclude toll roads

[bluemist9999]

My nuvi has a setting called "Avoidances," where you can tell it to ignore unpaved roads, U-turns, toll roads, HOV (i.e. >1 occupant per vehicle) lanes, etc.

I have gotten "lost" with a GPS when I tried to overanalyze what the unit was telling me to do. But I agree with the other posters---using a bit of common sense helps a lot.

[gbc_14]

my wife and i decided to watch a movie in a different movie house. there is a place where we always frequent so i was already familiar with the place. but, since the place we know is in the opposite direction of the movie house, i decided to use our garmin nuvi 350. it is set on "fastest time" so it always wanted us to take the interstate. i've learned to ignore some of the nuvi's suggestion many times so i'm quite familiar with the "recalculating" word. however, what i hated most this one time was, we were already about half a mile away from the movie house, but the nuvi still insisted on taking us through the interstate which would make us circle in about a 5-mile radius. that was really a very stupid experience.

[Zoobie]

Reminds me of another story I recently read where a family (also from San Fran--not sure if this is a trend) wanted their GPS to calculate the shortest distance from some point in Utah to the Grand Canyon. The dummy followed his GPS down ever narrowing dirt roads until he almost drove off the edge of a different canyon and had to be rescued.

Just because the Nuvi says the dirt road/country road/canal road is the shortest route, shouldn't replace anyone's common sense. That's why you have the option to do a route overview and look at the map of where you are going.

[nicmart]

I own a Garmin Nuvi 255w, and I'm amazed at how unreliable it is. In areas I know well, it frequently chooses a slower route, even though I have it set to choose the fastest. From the southeast side of my major city it sends me downtown and up surface streets, instead of directing me to use the Interstate which circles the city and exits near my road. The route the Garmin picks in this case takes almost twice as long. In the city the 255w often tells me to begin my journey as much as two blocks away, and I have to figure out where the starting street is located since no direction arrow appears on screen. Strangely, when you are in the middle of a programmed route and touch the screen, the Garmin zooms out, but it doesn't display north as up, south as down, etc. You are proceeding north, but it shows you going left-to-right.

I had been using Verizon's GPS system on my cell phone, and it frankly does a much better job, though it isn't as pretty.

[Perry_Clease]

It is no different from the old days. If you had stopped to ask for directions then the person would ask if you "want to know the best to get there?" I guess you have the option of getting the worst route, best route, or something in between.

[protagonistic]

Let's see, dumb driver+dumb GPS=... Well, you do the math. Someone who is directionally challenged should not be trusting a device that does not have a real brain.

[Dalkorian]

Hey, in all fairness it *DID* get him there!

Disclaimer: I myself am directionally challenged and sometimes it gets very annoying. A few years back my father was in the passenger seat giving me directions through his home town (at noon I should state, once he did this well after dark) and he would say things like "turn north at the next intersection". I would nearly freak - which way is north? I know north and south in my home town, but had no idea there.

Directionally challenged is not brain dead though - if someone (or some THING) tells me to turn against traffic on a one way street for example, they would be "recalculating" that route in the next block.

[Kalvos]

I always tell folks who are visiting us to follow my directions and NOT rely on Google maps, Mapquest, GPS units, etc. We're easy to find, but nearby roads that end up on Internet maps and GPS units are not usable in winter. The problem isn't the maps so much as the turn-by-turn directions that transform normally alert brains into geographical mush. One Google entry travels a Class 3 road that only snow machines use; my Tomtom would take me down a side road better suited for skiing; Mapquest is helpless with roads that have confusing names, such "Route 12 South" going in either direction.