Common sense and GPS?

[dodge man]

I live on a rural township road and a couple of weeks ago a semi truck hauling a load got stuck trying to make a corner that was to tight. Last night I learned the guy was following his gps and he was about the third guy to do it in the last few years. This road woukd probably be the shortest route to Springfield Illinois but obviously not the best. I was making fun of the guy with my wife when she reminded me I had done it recently. I turned down a dead end road the gps told me to take. Everyone in the car said it didn稚 look right but I followed the directions anyway. Difference was I was in a car and easily turned around.

My question is what kind of app do truckers use? Is there one that works better for them that keeps them on main roads? I realized there has been more than one time gps has given me a bum steer to.

 

[slckeys]

There are trucker GPS units which can account for vehicle height so you don't find yourself at a low bridge. Some try to get away with simply using their phone GPS which is how drivers get themselves into those situations...

 

[MossRoad]

I live on a rural township road and a couple of weeks ago a semi truck hauling a load got stuck trying to make a corner that was to tight. Last night I learned the guy was following his gps and he was about the third guy to do it in the last few years. This road woukd probably be the shortest route to Springfield Illinois but obviously not the best. I was making fun of the guy with my wife when she reminded me I had done it recently. I turned down a dead end road the gps told me to take. Everyone in the car said it didn稚 look right but I followed the directions anyway. Difference was I was in a car and easily turned around.

My question is what kind of app do truckers use? Is there one that works better for them that keeps them on main roads? I realized there has been more than one time gps has given me a bum steer to.

Years ago before consumer GPS, we printed out directions to Mammoth Cave from this new site called Map Quest. :laughing:

I followed it and eventually got the feeling it was incorrect, but decided to follow it just in case it was correct, and, more as a sense of curiosity as to where it would take us.

When the road narrowed to a 1 lane gravel trail that went THROUGH a farmer's barn, I'd had enough curiosity and got out of there before I got shot for trespassing in rural Kentucky. :laughing:

 

[oosik]

Years ago we followed our hand held gps on a trip from Spokane, WA to Omaha, NE. All went well until we were about 100 miles from Omaha. We religiously followed the gps and ended up out in the middle of a corn field. It was a county road that had been abandoned years previously.

 

[MossRoad]

Years ago we followed our hand held gps on a trip from Spokane, WA to Omaha, NE. All went well until we were about 100 miles from Omaha. We religiously followed the gps and ended up out in the middle of a corn field. It was a county road that had been abandoned years previously.

Nice! :laughing:

 

[Farmer495]

I was in a vehicle years ago and the guy had just got a new GPS unit, most of the trip went good until GPS plotted a previously untraveled route and the GPS announced to turn left at an upcoming intersection.....but the driver just heard "turn left" and turned immediately and drove off the road into a clump of bushes and upset the vehicle in the ditch. Never drove with him again.

 

[Jstpssng]

I was in the back seat on the way to a meeting with a client, in an area I was somewhat familiar with. The phone app said to turn right so we did... then take another right which I knew was actually wrong so I dug out my "Maine Atlas" map book. It took a few minutes to convince them that while the planned road was indeed shorter, there was no way we were going to drive down it; rather, we had to backtrack, get on the tar road and kick it into gear if we were going to get there on time. It added about 50 miles to our route but I wasn't in a mood to drag the truck 10 miles.

 

[RandyT]

Won a GPS in a raffle years ago, and didn't really use it other than just as a novelty. Anyway, was coming home from a trip and decided to let the GPS guide me home, knowing all the roads in the area just for fun. Anyway I was following the directions and came to a corner and the GPS said to turn right and then make an immediate left. Well the road curved to the right and the left would of been a road 60 years ago but had been closed and abandoned and was now part of a cemetery.

My favorite was when it would tell you to make a left in 200 feet and then immediately say recalculating route. The road that it originally suggested was a dead end but had been a complete through road years ago.

 

[two_bit_score]

I have a pretty good sense of direction but anyone can get in an area which they are unfamiliar. I have found GPS to be most useful in identifying for me my exact location so I can find my way from there. Map bppks still have value.

.

 

[hosspuller]

Phone GPS have a limitation ... Only work when you get data service. No service and the phone map is dead. Still carry the Garmin unit with updated maps. Phone is good for route conditions.

Best GPS use is for the warning of turns or street names before you pass them.:laughing:

 

[Frankenkubota]

First GPS receiver. One of the first anyway. They did get smaller!

I was in the right place at the right time when all this GPS and cell phone stuff got rolling. Dumb luck I guess.

One of my defense electronic customers called one day and said, you just fell into a bowl of cherries!

They had a contract to build a GPS receiver for the govt. It would use much of the kind of things I sold.

The co. had an F350 flatbed. On the flatbed was stacks and stacks of instrumentation. You guys in the business know about the 19 inch rack um stack um approach to tech? For whatever reason, instrumentation boxes were all 19 inches wide?

Directly across the street from this co., a big strip mall was being developed and had been surveyed. The defense co. used those survey measurements to calibrate their receiver, on a flat bed350!

Now it's on your wrist.

The original GPS had a margin of error designed into it, I guess for defense?

 

[Richard]

Same basic story here but we're not the drivers.

Backstory: I am the last house on a dead end road that is on a peninsula. The farm is about 250 acres and around it is another (no real idea) let's call it 1,000 acres of TVA land and on three of those sides is a lake. One way in, one way out.

Outside one day couple years ago a vehicle from nowhere near here (I know all the neighbors & their cars) slowly drove by my driveway... I looked up and they waived at me, continuing on.

A bit curious, a bit humored, a bit annoyed I dropped what I was doing and simply started to walk behind them. They were "up the way" just a bit where there is an apparent fork in the grass.... left fork takes you to the tip of the peninsula and the right fork takes you to the back side of the farm.

Long story short, they were trying to get to the next road over and their GPS brought them this way. What the GPS didn't know was 50 years ago, this dead end road DID in fact, use to go over there....but then, TVA came in and built a dam and now we have a lake, burying the road under water. The road literally dead ends at the waters edge looking a bit like a boat ramp.

I tried to explain to them they had to go back, curl around, turn left.... they were insistent that their destination was "straight ahead, just up there...it's showing us on the GPS"

I told them I agree.....it is.... you can see it......however.... do you not see the body of water between us and your desired destination??

**** that TVA huh, for slipping that fly into your ointment!

Finally, I said if they wanted to try to get over there, they had my permission to continue their journey but my advice would be to listen to the person who lives here and not only knows how to get to their destination but knows they probably can't walk/drive on water.

It's amazing how fervent someone might believe what the GPS is telling them instead of what their eyes are telling them.

 

[RandyT]

People have a bad habit of looking at the their phone and not paying attention to looking up and see what is in front of them. Totally explains people walking into traffic, walking into the side of an Amtrak train, Turning down a RR track because GPS said to turn here and then get hit by a train, Or arguing with a person about a road going through but can be seen that it is no longer true.

 

[dodge man]

My phone app, and I suspect most are the same, will continue to navigate if you lose data. You will lose most of the detail on the map, but the trick is you have to start the route while you have data and you can’t stop it unless you have data.

 

[kenmbz]

You can download offline maps on google maps. Just don't get traffic data etc.
Most car nav systems show my house being in the middle of an intersection a few thousand feet away. Amusing to drive through my house everyday.
Google maps shows my house and directions to it fine.

 

[/pine]

I remember when GPS was first available to the public using a differential coupler that allowed more precise (closer than 1000' ) pinpointing...there was a big rush to change over from LORAN for both aviation and maritime navigation...it was quite a chore converting coordinate libraries for fishermen...

 

[Fallon]

Selective availability Error analysis for the Global Positioning System - Wikipedia. Was the system designed to degrade the civilian GPS signal so it wasn't accurate to under 100m or so. Mostly so our adversaries couldn't use it for GPS guided bombs. The military got the un-degraded signal with special relievers. It got turned off permanently under Clinton because the value of accurate GPS outweighed the risks.

 

[RobertN]

There's a forest service road outside of Pollock Pines, Ca that goes connects two highways, about 30 miles apart. It is a nice wide 2-lane, but is not maintained in the winter. There are signs indicating that.

Still, GPS/Map programs will send people that way.

Sherriff and Search/Rescue finally put signs on both ends of the road, saying don't believe you GPS; road is closed in winter. They had dealt with numerous recoveries and rescues...

 

[MossRoad]

If you think about all of the streets, twist, turns, etc... in the U.S., most digital mapping systems are pretty accurate. Lot's more details than paper maps. And you can usually flip to satellite view if you don't believe what the on-screen map is showing. All-in-all, we are a spoiled lot and have it pretty easy.

 

[Industrial Toys]

I remember a year os so back looking for a place in Niagara Falls Ontario. Stopped and asked two seperate parties. BOTH, (tried to be very helpful) and could find the place on their phone map, but neither could tell me which direction (on a main road) I had to go to get there.