GPS Astray

[ZLoth]

This is a two-part video story from ABC News about a mom and two girls who decided to go to Death Valley on a hot summer day. On the way back, they decided to visit Death Valley's "Racetrack", and got very lost. Here are the links:

• Part 1
• Part 2

Personally, I think it wasn't technically the GPS, as all it reports is the latitude and longitude. It more is with the maps database which can contain old and outdated information. As noted in the report, the GPS still had a road listed that was washed out.... in 1976.

[DSS5]

I actually had fun going to Myrtle Beach with my GPS that hasn't been updated since 2010. It probably added an extra 45 minutes (it lacked a large stretch of Future I-74 in NC), but I got to see some beautiful countryside. Because I had to drive back late at night, I ended up using my phone for newer directions so I wouldn't have to drive the unlit, rural portions of U.S. 15/501 that I went down there on.

I got the GPS for free from my father, actually, he was just going to throw it out and offered it when I mentioned I was going on the trip. But until I bother to buy the requisite PC cable and pay for it to be updated, I'll probably just stick to using the Waze app on my phone for directions.

In a couple months I'll be one of the drivers on an 18 hour trip to San Antonio and we'll probably need some form of updated GPS, because the phone can be very unreliable at points.

[OracleUsr]

I just drove the I-73/74 stretch between Greensboro (well, I-73 there) and Rockingham.  There are signs that still say "US 220-FUTURE I-73/74" near Ellerbe, despite the fact that US 220 drops off onto its old route in Ellerbe then back just inside Richmond County.

A GPS is not a substitute for common sense.  I have one, and use it, but I don't take its instructions when it does things like when I was in Bay City, MI, and it told me to go straight ahead...past a locked gate.

[NE2]

I just drove the I-73/74 stretch between Greensboro (well, I-73 there) and Rockingham.  There are signs that still say "US 220-FUTURE I-73/74" near Ellerbe, despite the fact that US 220 drops off onto its old route in Ellerbe then back just inside Richmond County.

Unless it's changed recently, that's US 220 Business through Ellerbe.

[dfilpus]

I just drove the I-73/74 stretch between Greensboro (well, I-73 there) and Rockingham.  There are signs that still say "US 220-FUTURE I-73/74" near Ellerbe, despite the fact that US 220 drops off onto its old route in Ellerbe then back just inside Richmond County.

Unless it's changed recently, that's US 220 Business through Ellerbe.

US 220 is being routed back onto US 220 Alternate/Business from Candor to Ellerbe in the ongoing I 73/74 signage project. The project is not complete, so there is a mix of old and new signage.

[NE2]

Sweet. Don't tell AASHTO.

[hotdogPi]

Sweet. Don't tell AASHTO.

But if they read this...

[cpzilliacus]

Personally, I think it wasn't technically the GPS, as all it reports is the latitude and longitude. It more is with the maps database which can contain old and outdated information. As noted in the report, the GPS still had a road listed that was washed out.... in 1976.

Seems to take forever to get the maps updated. 

The project to reconstruct the 11th Street Bridge, S.E. and two nearby interchanges in Washington, D.C. (here, junction of I-295, I-695 and D.C. 295) has been under way for several years now, and significant changes to ramps were opened to traffic at the end of 2012.  But the Inrix, Verizon Wireless and Google GPS are still not updated, even though the online Google Maps does show the revised movements correctly.

[getemngo]

It really should be common sense that you can't rely on a GPS in certain areas. I've been in areas where it's nothing but logging roads, and not a single map can agree on which ones currently exist, let alone in what condition. Death Valley is probably much the same.

If you're heading toward a tourist site, a town, or a highway, as almost all of these people who wound up lost were, it's not too hard to find a local to ask, or a place online with directions.

See also: James Kim

[txstateends]

(I thought when I first saw the thread title, it was 'GPS Ashtray'!!  )

I tell guests all the time at my hotel to try to avoid etching every last GPS instruction in stone.  And yet, they do it anyway.....  "We went round and round!"  "It took us 2 hours to get here from the airport!!"  >ugh<, I will never have one (I guess because I'm already good with directions and getting around).

[cpzilliacus]

It really should be common sense that you can't rely on a GPS in certain areas. I've been in areas where it's nothing but logging roads, and not a single map can agree on which ones currently exist, let alone in what condition. Death Valley is probably much the same.

GPS in and of itself ought to work (as long as there is a view of the sky), but the GPS programs that rely on access to the cellular telephone network for data (such as Verizon Wireless' VZNavigator and Inrix) likely will not. 

Case in point - U.S. 48, a/k/a (part of) Corridor H in West Virginia.  There are many dead spots along eastern Corridor H (currently runs from Scherr in Grant County to Wardensville in  Hardy County).

[ZLoth]

I use GPS quite often and have found it to work pretty well. I found that Google Navigator to be pretty good, but there are enough dead spots for me to also make sure that my Garmin nüvi 265WT. I know that, for my upcoming trip, there are enough dead spots for me to reply on my Garmin. Of course, a paper backup is always good.

[oscar]

I've been to the hot springs of Saline Valley twice, which is the general area where the three women wound up stranded, and were very lucky to be rescued from.  However, I didn't go into that part of the Death Valley region in the summer (my only mid-summer trip, into the main part of Death Valley, stuck closely to well-traveled paved roads), and my winter trips into Saline Valley were from the north rather than the east as the women did.

Saline Valley, including the Racetrack that was the women's spur-of-the-moment destination, notoriously requires a lot of advance planning even in cooler weather.  That starts with bringing several days' worth of provisions (including at least twice as much food and water as you expect you'll need), extra fuel if your destination or routing is indefinite, doing an update through the Internet or in person at a Park Service office on road conditions (many of the roads going into the valley are officially closed, are subject to recent washouts or other closures that no GPS mapmaker can keep up with, or have other "gotchas" to hang up vehicles that are too wide or don't have super-high ground clearances), and calling a relative or friend to tell them where you're going and when you'll call them back when you've returned to pavement and civilization so they can alert search-and-rescue if you haven't called back.  And the Park Service will tell you so, at any visitor facilities such as Scotty's Castle, the women's first stop in the park, in one of the safer parts of the park.

BTW, cellphone service anywhere in the park is sporadic at best.  The place in Saline Valley I visit has a caretaker with an emergency-only satellite phone, which is the only reliable connection to the outside world for about fifty miles (some people can get a weak cellphone signal if they stand in just the right spot; others will rent their own satphones in case they break down on the way into or out of SV).   

"Death by GPS" is a favorite thread on hot springs forums I frequent.  But it's really a chain of horrible human misjudgments to blame here, starting with the spur-of-the-moment decision to go off-pavement in an area called "Death Valley" for a reason.

P.S.  The mother's response (at the end of video part 2) to her near-death experience, to replace her GPS nav system with another one -- as if that would've made a difference! -- suggests that she still doesn't have a clue.

[ZLoth]

Having been to Death Valley in the early 1980s (February) with my father, and seeing the reports, it is "be prepared". And, if I was headed there during the summer, I would have two ice chests full of liquid.... one filled with water, and one filled with Gatorade. And, I checked Verizon's coverage map.... absolutely NO service in Death Valley.

And, missing from the report was the need to update your GPS regularly.

[getemngo]

To add to what Oscar said: I didn't mean "you can't rely on a GPS" in the sense that you can't get a signal, but that GPSes cannot always distinguish between "road", "two track", "flooded road", and "was a road 40 years ago" in remote areas.

An example is that if you're in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, driving from Big Bay west to L'Anse and don't want to backtrack to Marquette... you won't be seeing any pavement, and it's very easy to get lost in the Huron Mountains when nothing is signed. There are only two reliable east-west roads, one of which requires four wheel drive. The best route also involves heading due north for a few miles around the halfway point, which is counterintuitive. Your GPS will not know any of this. I've heard of people driving around there and getting lost because they run into locked gates. This is what happens if you don't ask a human for directions.

[cpzilliacus]

BTW, cellphone service anywhere in the park is sporadic at best.  The place in Saline Valley I visit has a caretaker with an emergency-only satellite phone, which is the only reliable connection to the outside world for about fifty miles (some people can get a weak cellphone signal if they stand in just the right spot; others will rent their own satphones in case they break down on the way into or out of SV).

Some years ago, we visited Palm Springs, California, and decided to spend a day in Joshua Tree National Park (well worth the trip - the visit was in August, and it seemed we had the entire park to ourselves).  We were not camping or going to the "back country" at all.  Stayed on the hard-surfaced motor roads the entire way. 

But your point about cell phone coverage is spot-on correct in Joshua Tree as well.  The place is big enough that cell phone coverage does not exist in much of the park, and I have read about people getting lost (sometimes with fatal consequences) in the park.

[hbelkins]

To add to what Oscar said: I didn't mean "you can't rely on a GPS" in the sense that you can't get a signal, but that GPSes cannot always distinguish between "road", "two track", "flooded road", and "was a road 40 years ago" in remote areas.

An example is that if you're in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, driving from Big Bay west to L'Anse and don't want to backtrack to Marquette... you won't be seeing any pavement, and it's very easy to get lost in the Huron Mountains when nothing is signed. There are only two reliable east-west roads, one of which requires four wheel drive. The best route also involves heading due north for a few miles around the halfway point, which is counterintuitive. Your GPS will not know any of this. I've heard of people driving around there and getting lost because they run into locked gates. This is what happens if you don't ask a human for directions.

Amazing that the depicted route even had chevrons on some of the curves, as if you'd be going fast enough around one of them to chevrons to need to be posted.

That road looks a lot like a number of oil field or logging roads in my area that I've traversed in my truck.

[cpzilliacus]

An example is that if you're in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, driving from Big Bay west to L'Anse and don't want to backtrack to Marquette... you won't be seeing any pavement, and it's very easy to get lost in the Huron Mountains when nothing is signed. There are only two reliable east-west roads, one of which requires four wheel drive. The best route also involves heading due north for a few miles around the halfway point, which is counterintuitive. Your GPS will not know any of this. I've heard of people driving around there and getting lost because they run into locked gates. This is what happens if you don't ask a human for directions.

These are maintained by county or municipal government?

Some of the scenes in this video remind me of what the intercity highways in Finland looked like years ago (no longer - they are all now constructed and maintained to standards as high (or higher) than most U.S. states).

[getemngo]

Amazing that the depicted route even had chevrons on some of the curves, as if you'd be going fast enough around one of them to chevrons to need to be posted.

Most of the chevrons are for snowmobiles in the winter, actually!

These are maintained by county or municipal government?

Combination of county roads (Marquette and Baraga counties) and privately maintained logging roads. M-35 was planned to run through this area but got stopped by politics in the 1930s.