Drunk Driver Drives on RR Tracks, Blames GPS

[Brian556]

http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/Driver-Blames-GPS-for-Ending-Up-on-Railroad-Tracks-291786731.html?partner=nbcnews?par=nbcnews&site=nbcnews.com&cm_ven=nbcnews&cm_cat=Article

[Zeffy]

The average person who has an ounce of common sense would notice they are on railroad tracks and not the road if they bothered to pay attention to their surroundings. I mean, come on now, did the invention of GPS make motorists collectively dumber?

[jeffandnicole]

Vehicles on railroad tracks have the right of way over vehicles on the road.  I give this person credit for taking advantage of that.  Shame she didn't get the "Railtracks Driving Package" upgrade though on that vehicle.

[roadman65]

I supposed next someone will blame the GPS for leading them the wrong way on a one way street.  Or better yet when a road is closed for construction, someone will drive down it because "their GPS said to drive on it."

[kkt]

GPS has become the dog that ate people's homework or the post office that lost their rent check.

[tchafe1978]

Reminds me of this that happened in Milwaukee back in November:

http://www.wisn.com/news/semi-plows-into-lake-park-damaging-historic-bridge/29670688

[PHLBOS]

It's been said many times before; there's no cure for stupid.

[jeffandnicole]

I supposed next someone will blame the GPS for leading them the wrong way on a one way street.  Or better yet when a road is closed for construction, someone will drive down it because "their GPS said to drive on it."

Then read #8 of this regarding the construction excuse: http://theweek.com/articles/464674/8-drivers-blindly-followed-gps-into-disaster

What most of the stories in the links have in common:  The drivers admit to ignoring the actual conditions because the GPS told them to do something, and the police, who are accustomed to seeing accidents of all types, are amazed that these types of accidents actually happen.

[The Nature Boy]

Do GPS really route someone down a one way street though? I've used various GPS devices and I've never had ONE direct me down a one -way street.

What kind of dollar store GPSes are these people buying?

[Dr Frankenstein]

My hometown recently made some streets one-way and flipped some others. If your GPS data is obsolete, then it'll give you conflicting instructions. Very, very few people keep their GPS up to date (I blame the manufacturers charging for the updates for that).

As for the railroad track incident, I'd blame alcohol (and the stupidity of driving drunk) for that, not the GPS unit.

[The Nature Boy]

I encounter that issue when I drive through any area in NC with new I-74/73 construction. At that point though, I'm smart enough to know my route enough that I can adjust. Critical thinking skills are a great thing to have.

[roadman65]

GPSes always tell you to not rely on them completely as roads do often close, change alignments, or something else comes up locally that prevents roads selected to not be usable. 

Bottom line is you have to use common sense!  Heading on a RR track is plain stupid.  I mentioned the one way street as that is just as silly as that same driver driving the wrong way down the one way street scenario.

[vtk]

It depends on where the data comes from. A cheap source of road data is the Census Bureau, but their dataset doesn't contain info about one way streets, so that would have to come from somewhere else, and that supplementary source may be incomplete.

Or the data may just be outdated. Onewayness can change.

[roadman65]

Yes one day a town or city can change a two way street to a one way.  It may take the GPS a while before their database gets the info to display to drivers.

Also that left turn prohibition added to an intersection can also get in the way as well.  For years you can turn left into a street and the next day a NO LEFT TURN sign could be added.  Or even a divider added to a median can also be added to prevent a left turn that was able to made for years, that the GPS may have always been giving directions there for it, now is blocked off.

Things change and that is why the disclosure is there.

[Roadrunner75]

This has proven to be a popular spot for people ending up on railroad tracks, drunk or not:
https://maps.google.com/maps?ll=40.713537,-74.040942&spn=0.000004,0.002626&t=m&z=19&layer=c&cbll=40.713501,-74.041543&panoid=wbVgn0H7zKI0wGHdphu4hQ&cbp=12,315.01,,0,3.31

[The Nature Boy]

Yeah, GPSes are good to have for general directions but relying on them verbatim is always a bad call. They're best for two things: interstate highway travel and intracity travel in a place that you've never been before. In both cases, you need to read signs because things change. GPSes will never replace being able to read a sign.

But even still, one way alignments don't change THAT often. I don't even buy high end GPSes and I've still never had that happen.

[Henry]

Another way to get your license revoked for life...

[Brian556]

Quote from Roadrunner 65:

This has proven to be a popular spot for people ending up on railroad tracks, drunk or not:
https://maps.google.com/maps?ll=40.713537,-74.040942&spn=0.000004,0.002626&t=m&z=19&layer=c&cbll=40.713501,-74.041543&panoid=wbVgn0H7zKI0wGHdphu4hQ&cbp=12,315.01,,0,3.31

I can't figure out why they have concrete slabs like a street a short distance down the tracks. this is probably contributing to the problem. Also, the railroad ahead sign is mis-used and makes no sense where it is.

[kkt]

Are commercial trucks required to be inspected every year?  Should the inspection be required to include a current truck GPS?

[The Nature Boy]

Do trucks come equipped with a GPS? A friend of mine is a truck driver and he uses his own personal GPS in his truck.

[kkt]

Do trucks come equipped with a GPS? A friend of mine is a truck driver and he uses his own personal GPS in his truck.

Maybe they should, so that drivers wouldn't be tempted to use personal GPSs that weren't made for trucks?

[jeffandnicole]

Another way to get your license revoked for life...

Why? 

Are commercial trucks required to be inspected every year?  Should the inspection be required to include a current truck GPS?

It depends on the state.  GPSs should always be optional equipment and shouldn't be required.  Most truck drivers know what they're doing and where they are going.  For the most part, equipment made for cars don't work well in trucks, regardless of what it is.

[slorydn1]

In my county we have had two instances of people driving their cars down a dead end road and straight off a boat ramp into the river because their GPS routed them that way.

In one of the two instances, there were signs stating dead end road, then the pavement ends several hundred feet before the water and still no thought sent to the brain that something isn't quite right.....

After the first one happened I punched up the location that the driver said he wanted to get to on my early generation Garmin Quest (way back in the day) and I'll be darned if it didn't say to go the way he did.

Still, It all goes back to childhood. Those of us that got smoked worse for saying "So and so made me do it" when caught with our hands in the cookie jar learned personal responsibility and those who didn't blame everything on someone/something else.

[Mr. Matté]

In real life, only one person (maybe two, the driver and her attorney) should be blaming the GPS device for driving on the tracks, but to my amazement, about 21 out of 22 posters here missing the real reason.

Dr. Frankenstein so far is the only one correctly placing the blame, on the drunk driver.

[slorydn1]

In real life, only one person (maybe two, the driver and her attorney) should be blaming the GPS device for driving on the tracks, but to my amazement, about 21 out of 22 posters here missing the real reason.

Dr. Frankenstein so far is the only one correctly placing the blame, on the drunk driver.

No, I didn't miss the real reason why this particular incident occurred, I figured the part about her being impaired was so self evident it didn't need rehashing.

I can't speak for the rest of the posters, but I was only relating my experiences with other people blaming the GPS for their failure to drive the car instead of allowing a computer to do it for them.