So I'm gonna share a story. In this story I'm a fucking idiot. But I hope that it serves as a warning to someone so they can learn from my dumb mistakes. So I was going out to see some mates the other day in a big state forest near Melbourne.
Decided to take my car (a mid sized AWD SUV) rather than the wife's small FWD sedan. This proved to be a very good choice. Mind you, my car may be awd but its for like a slightly damp soccer field carpark, not what I accidentally forced it into.
I set google maps on car play and off I go.
Traveling into the park with basically no phone coverage everything going fine till suddenly get told to turn off a decent gravel path onto a side road. No warnings or anything, and again maps said go this way. So I did. It looked OK to start with, but by the time I realized I was was in trouble it was too late.
The road degraded to a goat track and I start sliding down it with no chance of turning around and no phone data to be able to reroute anyway. Maps said I was 10 minutes from meet up point so I decided to push on not really having a choice.
Soon enough i come to a patch of very wet deep tyre tracks. so long as I stick to the high ground I'll be fine. You can see where this is going, cant you? Yep. She slid straight off the highground into foot deep giant puddles of mud and immediately got bogged.
Chucked the car in mud mode, managed to reverse 2 feet before I couldn't go any further, put the car back in drive and took off at speed but just got stuck in the same spot again and this time couldn't reverse.
Now I didn't panic. That probably saved me. It woulda been easy to accidentally dig her in. My hear beat about 170bpm, but I got out and as calmly as I could assessed the situation. No phone coverage. I walked ahead a bit to make sure I was ok to proceed assuming I could even get out of this mess. I could. Even better there was a downed tree. I grab some branches and stick them under the wheels as best I can. it took about 15-20 minutes. With a dashboard full of warning lights I jump back in and take off slowly, feel it grab some traction in my best Jeremy Clarkson impression scream "SPEED AND POWER" and fucking launch the SUV out of there.
Slowly I proceed to the meet point passing a proper 4x4 who looked at me with shock and horror on his face. A poor little SUV so far out of its depth it wasn't even funny and an idiot who almost got himself in serious trouble.
I meet at the meeting point and my friends laugh. They approached from another direction and has 0 issues on a smooth gravel road. They all used Google Maps too, it just sent them in a different way for some reason.
So. What did I learn and why am i telling this story? a few key points:
- If your going bush, even on GOOD roads make sure someone knows where you are
- If you start to get into trouble: Reverse. Even if you have to reverse 500m! Dont commit to the fuck up assuming it'll get better.
- Google maps has no concerns about sending you down tracks that even a dirtbike would struggle with 0 warning.
TLDR: I've become one of those "I was just following the GPS" people.
I'm glad you got out of it unscathed. This has been an issue in Australia for a long time (I recall a news article about a farmer who constantly had tourists turning up unannounced on his property because they were blindly following Google or Apple Maps). Without wanting to make you feel too guilty, every time I read one of these stories I'm just astounded that a) people aren't consulting maps before travelling rurally to get a rough idea of where they need to go and b) that people don't pull over and do this the moment something seems off.
Maybe it's because I'm a bit older (not actually old, just not raised by smartphones age) or because I went on many camping trips pre-smartphone as a kid and watched the adults in my family navigate using physical maps (which they also taught me how to read) but I would never in a million years rely solely on GPS navigation if I was driving somewhere for the first time - particularly if it was a rural area. Even in metropolitan areas, I will always do a quick scan of main roads and landmarks first to get a rough imprint of where I need to go so I can focus on driving and only rely on the GPS at the very end.
A nurse in Canada died because Google maps sent him on a snowmobile/quad trail and his truck was too big for a wood bridge he tried to cross...
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/south-shore-nurse-northern-quebec-cnesst-1.5809425
Wow, that's definitely one of the more extreme ones I've heard. His employer even had a recommended route that he ignored because the Google Maps route was supposedly quicker. Crazy.
This isnt a gps specific problem though, its an inaccurate map problem. If the road isnt marked as 4wd only on the paper map you'd be in just as much trouble.
Although i guess the paper map might provide more traction than a gps when you wedge it under the wheel :D
I think you are right. In the end, Turn-By-Turn Navigation is just another driver assistance system that can be turned into a crutch, just like Automatic Transmissions and Automated Cruise Control.
The driver still needs to take responsibility for their driving.
That said, using Turn-By-Turn Navigation is much safer than having the driver flip through the Melways or VicRoads Directory and whilst driving, or flipping and folding a RoofTops map whilst driving.
The problem has always been that Google doesn't give a shit about user feedback, so it isn't easy to report an error in Google maps. If you miss a turn, or get bogged down, it should ask for route feedback every time. Either way you should fuck Google and use OpenStreetMaps to evolve a better, non-proprietary, free, alternative.
In 2010 I punched in a waterfall and followed the route. The road was sealed and fine, but Google Maps sent me down the opposite side of a mountain range. When I arrived at the end of the road and it said to continue going straight down a driveway I stopped. Only took a minute for an old mate to show up and tell me that the waterfall was on the opposite side of the mountain and there's no road to get there before sundown. It's always done shit like this, and I don't expect Google to ever care enough to stop shit like this from happening.
Ive had some luck in the past fixing roads in google maps, but havent tried lately. Were paper map publishers better? At least an app can be updated, whereas a published paper map is pretty much static.
That's not really true. If you are navigating via a physical map and you encounter something unusual, you refer back to the map. At that point you know a) where you are in relation to where you are going and b) that the map has an inaccuracy. Then you make an active decision to either continue on the same route or to find an alternate route. You can still get into trouble, but it will be because you made the choice to risk continuing on your current route instead of taking a different one.
The problem time and time again in these "misled by map app" stories is that the driver never pulls over and looks at the map in detail. They never search for an alternate route or even question whether they are on the best one. They have complete and total faith that their map application knows best and the constant audio prompts reinforce that, so they just keep driving and get themselves into a bad situation without failing any of the skill checks (for lack of a better term) that a physical map user would need to fail to reach the same point.
Nothing you said there is exclusive to paper maps. You can still stop and check the GPS when something is wrong. On a recent holiday I did exactly that when a scenic detour got a lot rougher than expected (It was even better, as i could use the satelite view to see that the road didnt just drive through a lake, which a paper map could not show).
There have been plenty of people who have followed paper maps to their deaths as well. You could argue that GPS has lowered the bar, but its not the map, its the navigator.
I think you sort of missed the point I was making in the second paragraph there. A physical map does not offer real-time navigation or encourage to you continue on your current course in the way that map applications do. Most people who use physical maps do not read the map as they are driving, they read it before they start driving and then refer to it intermittently. As a result, people are more likely to refer to the map if something seems unusual because they might think they've misremembered the route and taken a wrong turn. In the same scenario, a navigation app reliant user has fewer barriers to continue on that route because the map is constantly reassuring them that they're going in the right direction. You say it's the navigator's fault, but that's just the way navigation apps are designed to be used. The entire point of them is that you don't have to pull over and consult the map because it's supposed to be constantly updating and correcting itself in real-time. That's why people are so trusting in them.
I got that, and I do see your point, just disagree with it is all. A physical map can provide very similar levels of encouragement and confidence as a digital one.
As a kid when my parents were teaching me to navigate with melways I made the exact same kinds of mistakes - "The map says its here, it must be here"
Maybe phone apps provide more encouragement, but im unconvinced that "just use a paper map" is actually the answer. Learn your tool is the right answer in my opinion. (And perhaps borrow from Aviation: ~~Aviate~~ Drive, Navigate, Communicate)
This reminds me of a time I got lost - I followed the direction on a road sign to go from a tourist destination I had visited and it pointed me into a plantation where I got lost. Both paper and gps maps were inaccurate and a lot of road were not passable. I pulled over to check the map over and over but the roads didn't match reality and I kept going in circles and it took me hours to get back out. Not quite as bad as trying to navigate the Epworth Hospital carpark but a close second.
yup, maps, real paper maps, read before you leave and take it with you