# To much technology can get you in TROUBLE.



## readytogo (Apr 6, 2013)

http://www.salon.com/2014/02/19/9_of_the_most_epic_gps_failures_partner/
:ignore:


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## nightwing (Jul 26, 2014)

“I don’t know why they wouldn’t question driving into a puddle that doesn’t seem to end,” said Lt. Eric Keenan with the Bellevue Fire Department.

The great white north:
I think most of the people with common sense left, the ones that are left are being forced out.


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## bigpaul (Jun 16, 2012)

oh yeah, sat navs I have lost count of the number of cars I have found stuck in the narrow lanes in our Devon countryside. one women drove straight into a raging ford cos her sat nav told her too and her husband was washed away and drowned...................


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## readytogo (Apr 6, 2013)

Few years back my friend and his friends got lost while hunting with GPS even the cell phones fail to work in the woods,not one of them had a regular compass,having a few beers and joking about it I ask one of the college boys which way he was facing and he totally was lost,so that goes to show the state of the world today,technology is not for everyone.:laugh:


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## Viking (Mar 16, 2009)

Down hear in S.W. Oregon there is a mountain road that has taken at least one life of a GPS believer, it's West of Grants Pass and starts by the Rogue River, it's called Bear Camp Road. Others have died on it as well because they think it's a short cut to the coast. I don't know what the elevation is at it's highest but I've been on some of the same elevation roads in the region and even up to June I've seen deep snow in a shady road corner. I have a GPS but I only use it in conjunction with topographic maps that are gridded for GPS and only then to confirm that I'm in the approximate area or as a reference point I can return to at a later time. Nothing beats a physical map and a compass in your hands, I like the state Atlas & Gazetteer maps from DeLorme because they show back roads, BLM, state lands and GPS grids. We do carry compasses in our vehicles, also food, water and blankets. Now I could say that trusting in GPS could be a form of culling out really stupid people but I try to be nice. Some cell phone users also seem to have a death wish that puts them in about the same class as those who trust GPS.


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## hiwall (Jun 15, 2012)

Nothing wrong with embracing technology as long as you do not depend on it.


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## Viking (Mar 16, 2009)

hiwall said:


> Nothing wrong with embracing technology as long as you do not depend on it.


Ah, yes, but to far too many it is like a drug. About two weeks ago we were on the freeway and a full fuel tanker was weaving over the divider line off and on and as I passed the truck my wife said he was texting. People step into traffic without looking because they are on a cell phone, texting or talking. Seems to me it has become a an addictive idolatry. I makes me wonder, how many of these tech users would commit suicide if all electronic systems failed, as in a huge X powered CME. This being said we all use technology to some extent, it's pretty hard to avoid it unless you've gone native and in that case you wouldn't be on this site posting. So I guess, to some small degree, I am embracing tech.


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## BillS (May 30, 2011)

I think of CNET tech writer James Kim who got stranded with his family on a mountain road around Thanksgiving. If he would've had a satellite phone to call for help he would have lived. Instead he was forced to walk for help and died of hypothermia.

In regard to the other examples, the directions from your GPS have the pass a common sense test.


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## Tirediron (Jul 12, 2010)

It isn't just cars that get misrouted by GPS/ Electronics, I have had wideload permit route sent to me that put you in some pretty sketchy situations, one ended in an oil lease, the other tried to send me down a road with a bridge washed out. no more electronic routing without double checking the paper map :shtf: 

turning a tractor, jeep and a lowbed takes a little bit more room than the family sedan


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## Viking (Mar 16, 2009)

BillS said:


> I think of CNET tech writer James Kim who got stranded with his family on a mountain road around Thanksgiving. If he would've had a satellite phone to call for help he would have lived. Instead he was forced to walk for help and died of hypothermia.
> 
> In regard to the other examples, the directions from your GPS have the pass a common sense test.


He and his family were on Bear Camp Road. He did NOT have common sense, the majority of people that travel during winter time all seem to be sadly lacking in that department. A great deal of the people traveling during the winter are wearing light clothes and shoes, no extra heavy coats, no boots, no food and no water. I'm still trying to think of why a man would continue to drive into heavy snow and get stuck except that he and others that have died on this road have zero sense of driving in snow. In the walk that he took he should have stayed on the road, I suspect that he was already too cold from lack of proper clothing and his thought processes got messed up quickly making him think that a shortcut down the mountain would help him get to a road quicker. Seems to me that it wasn't all that many days later and a truck driver got his rig stuck on the same road, he fared much better but blew out a tire trying to get his truck turned around. Kim' father wanted to have that road closed during the winter but there are a lot of hunters and firewood gatherers that use that road during winter months. Those people know how to deal with how that road is. Closing a road like that, for everyone, is like protecting you from yourself, the Ralph Nader syndrome as I call it. Some may remember the Corvair and the book Nader wrote about it called "Unsafe At Any Speed". I know I've kind of gotten off subject a bit but the truth is we've lost common sense in the quest for all the great wonderful electronic gizmos.


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## gilacr (Dec 30, 2013)

Several months ago my son and several of his friends went on a campout. They had decided to go for a hike and two of the boys brought out thier GPSs and marked their waypoints. After a few hours the batteries on both GPSs died. Like a lot of teenagers they had failed to either check their batteries or pack spares. My son had his GPS and spare batteries but he opted to teach them a lesson and broke out his topo map and compass. Since then he has tought several of them land navigation using an old fashioned compass. Moral of the story is that sometimes old fashioned is simply more reliable.


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## readytogo (Apr 6, 2013)

*We get ourselfs in trouble.........*

As we all know and see it all around in all forms of media, the commercialism of new gadgets and the push to sell something old in a new box; a phone is a phone a car is a car a TV is a TV, etc etc etc, we get ourselves in trouble not only by going gaga over the gadgets but by also failing to learn the old ways, nobody wants to crawl anymore everybody wants to walk first, is that mentality that gets everybody in trouble .My first car was a 1963 Ford Falcon without a GPS or tracking system but I knew how to use a compass and read a map folks and damn it, how I miss that car.


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## Caribou (Aug 18, 2012)

Viking said:


> Down hear in S.W. Oregon there is a mountain road that has taken at least one life of a GPS believer, it's West of Grants Pass and starts by the Rogue River, it's called Bear Camp Road. Others have died on it as well because they think it's a short cut to the coast. I don't know what the elevation is at it's highest but I've been on some of the same elevation roads in the region and even up to June I've seen deep snow in a shady road corner. I have a GPS but I only use it in conjunction with topographic maps that are gridded for GPS and only then to confirm that I'm in the approximate area or as a reference point I can return to at a later time. Nothing beats a physical map and a compass in your hands, I like the state Atlas & Gazetteer maps from DeLorme because they show back roads, BLM, state lands and GPS grids. We do carry compasses in our vehicles, also food, water and blankets. Now I could say that trusting in GPS could be a form of culling out really stupid people but I try to be nice. Some cell phone users also seem to have a death wish that puts them in about the same class as those who trust GPS.


Does Bear camp road tie into Jerry's Flat Rd. ?


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## Viking (Mar 16, 2009)

Caribou said:


> Does Bear camp road tie into Jerry's Flat Rd. ?


Yes, it does tie into the Agness Road on the Rogue River and as that road comes down near the ocean it looks like it's changed to Jerry's Flat Rd. Believe me, that road is no shortcut between Grants Pass and the ocean, who ever put that road on a GPS as a route to the ocean without winter warnings needs to be hung by their thumbs.


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## Caribou (Aug 18, 2012)

Viking said:


> Yes, it does tie into the Agness Road on the Rogue River and as that road comes down near the ocean it looks like it's changed to Jerry's Flat Rd. Believe me, that road is no shortcut between Grants Pass and the ocean, who ever put that road on a GPS as a route to the ocean without winter warnings needs to be hung by their thumbs.


I thought so. I took that road from the coast to I-5 last winter. You are right, I also would not describe it as a shortcut. It is a beautiful drive though. I didn't see another car for about 2 1/2 hours which was really good as it is a one lane road.

It was a beautiful trip and I did have a good map. A GPS is a fine tool but for travel in a car I much prefer a map. I use a GPS to find my place on a map or to retrace my steps. My niece just got her drivers license so I gave her a set of maps for her State and those surrounding her.


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## TheLazyL (Jun 5, 2012)

Viking said:


> ... people traveling during the winter are wearing light clothes (shorts) and shoes (flip flops), no extra heavy coats, no boots, no ...


Winter storm. Temperatures in the single digits. Sit in a Wall-Mart parking lot and see how the people are dressed as they go and from the store.

These are the same nuts who sit in the car watching you dig them out from a snow drift. Why do I do it? Because they were in my way and I couldn't safely 4x4 around them!

When I was around 10 years old I got lost in the neighbors corn field. To a 10 year old that corn was a very tall and dense forest, couldn't see the sun to tell east or west (home was west). Being a (pretend) Scout for the U.S. Cavalry only armed with my BB rifle I choked down my panic. I knew the field was planted North and South except the end rows. North a half mile or so would bring me to a woods, the long way home. South a quarter mile or so would bring me to our road, the short way home. I guessed right 

If I had my Indian Scout Tom-Tom with me back then, I could have either gotten home sooner or still be out it that corn field.


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## BlueShoe (Aug 7, 2010)

Before there was affordable GPS, The airport in Tampa used to have a problem with elderly people mistaking the runway for a roadway. The real problem comes at the end of the runway. Every now and then one of the drivers would end up in the drink or on the beach of Tampa Bay at the end of one of the runways. Hopefully Homeland Security has secured the area by now.


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## fteter (May 23, 2014)

So...I'm a technology guy. I make my living in the enterprise software world. One of the first things you learn in tech is to always have a backup. Because sooner or later, technology will always fail...it's just too expensive to design and build 100% reliability (costs go up by orders of magnitude for each incremental increase as reliability approaches 100%).

You shouldn't throw away your carpenter's hammer just because you have a nifty new air hammer. Yup, I have a power saw. But my hand saw is still in my tool kit. Ditto for my power drill. And technology is just another set of nifty new tools.

The same idea applies to a GPS. I've driven all over North America (mostly for pleasure) using GPS technology. But there's always a set of detailed maps in the car with me.

Always have a backup.


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## Gians (Nov 8, 2012)

fteter said:


> So...I'm a technology guy. I make my living in the enterprise software world. One of the first things you learn in tech is to always have a backup. Because sooner or later, technology will always fail...it's just too expensive to design and build 100% reliability (costs go up by orders of magnitude for each incremental increase as reliability approaches 100%).
> 
> You shouldn't throw away your carpenter's hammer just because you have a nifty new air hammer. Yup, I have a power saw. But my hand saw is still in my tool kit. Ditto for my power drill. And technology is just another set of nifty new tools.
> 
> ...


That's one reason I like acoustic-electric guitars, power out..no problemo artydance: Lots of hand tools too.


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## cowboyhermit (Nov 10, 2012)

fteter said:


> So...I'm a technology guy. I make my living in the enterprise software world. One of the first things you learn in tech is to always have a backup.


Yup, anyone I know who has worked on computers, electronics, networks, it seems the more you know about them the less you _trust_ them. You can build in redundancies, like RAID, etc, and you understand how to fix things so you can have some trust in your system as a whole but you know nothing can really be relied upon.


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## readytogo (Apr 6, 2013)

We all know that technology has change the world,just seating here and typing this few words so many out there can read them proves it but it also has its draw backs,taking it for granted can hurt you,I have witness it many outtings were the laptop of someone in the next tent goes dead and you can feel the heart attack coming,why not just bring the stove manual instead of trying to  goggle it,or my favorite is the total failure of the fancy electronic cigar lighter:brickwall: ,I just love my Zippo.


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## sillybilly (Sep 18, 2014)

I agree. Learn primitive land navigation online and others but put in a ziplock bag, a small handcrank AM/FMR radio.


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