Re: GPS Thoughts?

On Sun, 03 May 2009 03:47:23 -0700, gl4317@xxxxxxxxx (gl) wrote:

In article <yd2dnRc1ndTNEGHUnZ2dnUVZ_u-dnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Floyd Rogers" <fbloogyuds@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

The map database (there are really only a couple companies doing that)
are not very good in knowing the quality of roads it chooses. That can
get people into a lot of trouble: just last week a woman had to be rescued
from that road in OR where a family was lost two years ago for a couple of
weeks and the father died trying to hike out.


Actually it was about 100 miles north of the earlier incident.

The young woman in question got lost around Monroe, while trying to get
between Corvallis and Eugene. The GPS told her to go to an old logging
town that no longer exists, in order to find help with a flat tire. If it
is the place I think it was, the entire town was torn down by Boise
Cascade (the company that owned it) sometime in the 1960s.

The family that got lost two years ago was trying to get between I-5 and
the Oregon Coast near Grants Pass. That is actually a paved road in quite
good condition, but it is closed in winter due to the difficulty of
plowing it. Even the cheapest paper road map of Oregon I've ever seen
marks it as such. However, I'm not sure what GPS units do with seasonal
road closures like that.

And in a deadly irony, James Kim was a technical analyst for Cnet, but
they *didn't* have a GPS with them that might have saved them (both by
making sure they didn't miss the exit for OR42 that they intended to
take, and showing them their correct location once stranded). Very
very sad story; I followed it closely because I could see my family
making similar choices under the circumstances (late, lost, don't want
to turn back, underestimate the weather ahead, etc.)

GPS, like many other tools, shouldn't be solely relied on (it doesn't
know safe from unsafe neighborhoods, weather, etc), but as an
*additional* tool can be invaluable.

Josh
.

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