
Ignore the GPS – That Ocean Is Not a Road - leephillips
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/opinion/sunday/ignore-the-gps-that-ocean-is-not-a-road.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=span-abc-region&region=span-abc-region&WT.nav=span-abc-region
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cgriswald
> If we’re being honest, it’s not that hard to imagine doing something similar
> ourselves. Most of us use GPS as a crutch while driving through unfamiliar
> terrain, tuning out and letting that soothing voice do the dirty work of
> navigating.

It is very difficult for me to imagine driving 250 miles out of the way (
_especially_ when I'm tired and really want to get where I'm going); or
driving into the ocean; or driving off a bridge because I've ignored all the
road closed signs. I don't even shut my brain off to this degree when another
human is helping navigate.

The article is saying our cognitive maps are deteriorating because navigation
software provides the information instantly at hand. For some people that may
be true. I've noticed this effect in other aspects of my life, though not with
navigation. But even if true, that does not explain people ignoring all other
indicators that something is not correct.

~~~
AJ007
This sounds like a remix of one of the many "internet is making us dumb"
stories. If anything the existence of GPS, satellite, constantly updated maps,
and now detailed 3D city maps makes our "cognitive maps" (whatever that means)
far better now than in the past where our navigation was done from printed
Rand McNally folding map.

The reality is there are a lot of impaired drivers on the road. May be they
have been drinking, have early onset dementia, or just a mixture of
prescription medications with undocumented side effects. A lot have spent half
the time sending text messages on their phones. Whatever the circumstance,
some of the tools we have now let them survive longer or at least pretend they
know what they are doing.

~~~
caf
Do you really doubt that if you use a GPS to navigate over an unfamiliar route
and were then asked to repeat the journey the following day, you'd do
significantly worse than if you'd had to plan your original route by hand?

A cognitive map is an internal mental map of how some region of space is
connected. Using landmarks and signs to follow a route from a map naturally
builds mental connections between your observations of the world and the
corresponding points on the map, in a way that following spoken directions
does not.

~~~
jen729w
I absolutely think that following the GPS provides a worse mental map of the
area/route than looking at an old fashioned paper map.

Here in Melbourne we have (shortly: had) the Melways. A4 size traditional map-
book, two pages covers a good couple of suburbs. Let's call it a 5km-wide
area.

When you look at this map, you see the relationships of suburbs. Balaclava is
just to the east of St Kilda, which flows to the south to Elwood, etc. You see
the major arterial roads and where they lead. You build a proper, high-level
mental model of where you are.

Contrast this to the GPS. "Turn left in 100m" tells you _nothing_ of your
locale. It gives you no context. You see a sign that says "Elwood" and you're
heading south because the beach is to your right and you know you want to be
in St Kilda but this isn't useful to you: your brain doesn't instinctively
think, hmm, _that just feels wrong_.

GPS is amazing until it doesn't work, and then you are truly lost.

------
shadeless
This reminds me of a trip I was on a couple of years ago. I was traveling from
Italy to France, and wanted to make a visit to a friend in Switzerland on the
way. I never drove that route before, so I just typed the friend's address
into the GPS and followed every turn. It made me go on a really curvy and
steep road up the Alps, than equally curvy and steep down. The road was wet
from the melting ice/snow (it was a summer trip) and at one point I went
through a foggy area which looked like I was driving through the clouds.

It was a pretty interesting experience, but I kept thinking that it was
strange that there were basically no other cars in either direction. When I
got to the bottom I saw why: this road was merging with a tunnel which goes
directly underneath the path I took, saving you a couple of hours of driving.
Live and learn.

~~~
JorgeGT
So the GPS took you into a lonesome journey of introspection, man and machine
conquering a demanding road through the beautiful scenery of the summer
Alps... instead of directing you to through a boring, overcrowded tunnel?
Seems pretty good to me!

------
desas
Everyone laughs at these mistakes, including me. Mine happened while
holidaying in the Lake District, we were planning to hike to Scafell Pike
(highest point in England), from Seathwaite. So we rolled out of our tent at
5am, got in the car, punched Seathwaite into the sat nav, and drove. We passed
ominous warning signs. We thought that sounded reasonable for the highest
point in England so we ploughed on.

We did get out the car at Seathwaite an hour or more later, feeling slightly
puzzled as we had recollections it was about 30 minutes away from the
campground. We put it down to google underestimating the time taken to go on
the slightly scary steep, single track roads.

After stretching our legs, we consulted our actual map + walking instructions
and couldn't get anything to match up. We flagged down a local and they
pointed out that there's another Seathwaite about ten miles away as the crow
flies and that was probably the one we wanted. The catch was that three
mountains lay between us. I've rarely felt so embarrassed. The drive over the
Wrynose and Hard Knott pass was very picturesque though.

------
rfreytag
While driving in Bavaria my wife was programming the GPS. Since she new
nothing of umlauts
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umlaut](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umlaut))
we ended up going to a tiny farming community rather than a town near Schloß
Neuschwanstein. Luckily, a suitable castle also constructed by King Ludwig can
be found in nearly every part of Bavaria, a few minutes searching turned one
up, and it turned into an unexpectedly wonderful day.

GPS errors can bring good experiences as well.

~~~
nsns
Related: [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/aug/04/lourdes-gps-
mis...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/aug/04/lourdes-gps-mistake-
catholic-pilgrims)

------
Pxtl
Honestly, it wouldn't hurt for the software to have some warnings and
confirmations for trips that exceed 3 hours.

I've been burned by this myself since I still used an old Garmin far past its
expiry date - trying to avoid a border toll while I was visiting Buffalo, it
tried to send me the complete wrong direction and I only stopped when I
noticed the arrival time said 9am and not 9pm... I was unfamiliar with the
area so it would be easy to not realize my mistake, I only checked the device
when it became obvious when I'd been on the road too long for what was
supposed to be a shortish drive.

Similarly, in New Brunswick it tried to have me shortcut through an
increasingly-rugged wasteland of logging roads. It took me an hour of
backtracking to extricate myself from that. Fool me once, shame on you, fool
me twice, shame on me.

I use Google Maps now.

~~~
mikeash
Every navigation device I've used will show the estimated drive time,
distance, and a map. I always do a quick sanity check on these before I start
following the directions. Do other people not do this?

~~~
jpatokal
On many GPS models, including my own crusty Garmin, this requires an
additional tap and a longish wait while it renders the map as an illegible
squiggle. So I rarely do this unless I want to confirm that I'm going via a
specific route, and even then it's only useful if I know the route options
beforehand and can tell them apart.

As an aside, the Garmin routing is terrible: it (for example) frequently
"optimizes" for distance by doing endless zigzags on small roads instead of a
single turn on big roads, even when the settings tell it to take the "best" or
the "fastest" route. Of course this is to some degree unavoidable when all the
brains it has is a tiny on-board CPU; but I've already long since resolved
that my next car will have Android Auto, so the cloud can do the work.

~~~
ghaff
>As an aside, the Garmin routing is terrible: it (for example) frequently
"optimizes" for distance by doing endless zigzags on small roads instead of a
single turn on big roads

Google sometimes does this as well. I joke that it seems as if Google Maps
sometimes just wants to take a drive in the country. Not that I always mind
but, especially if the weather isn't great, I'd probably prefer the simpler
route even if it theoretically takes a minute more.

------
__bb
I have anecdata here. A single lane, paved but rough road, signed 'no entry
for deliveries' regularly has delivery vehicles coming up it because their GPS
navigator told them to.

The sign is large. The track is almost half a mile long and has nowhere to
turn around at the end.

It is very difficult to get the navigation providers to remove this private
access from the maps. Even if they do, there are many people who will never
update their satnav software.

This lack of updating may become an increasing problem as roads change and
hardware ages, but directions remain the same.

------
ryanmcbride
The only GPS mishap I've ever had was when Google maps got me in an infinite
loop.

I was driving into San Francisco from the East bay, and when I got over the
bay bridge, Google had me get off the freeway, turn a few times, and I ended
up right back on the freeway, going back over the bridge. I realized right
away what was happening after I got back on the freeway, but there were no
more exits, so I had to drive to treasure island, and turn around.

That wasn't so bad, but once I crossed the bridge again, I kept following the
GPS and ended up right back on the bridge.

Google Maps would try to get me to do this every time I drove over the bridge
for a couple of weeks, but I never fell for it again.

This was around the time that they were building the new east bridge, so I
wondered if it had anything to do with that but I can't imagine how it would.

~~~
therein
I'm sure at least a portion of those construction workers on the bridge had
Android phones that Google collected maps data from.

~~~
chinathrow
Ha, then someone just needs a flock of location enabled smartphones pushing
faked traffic patterns back to Google and hilarity ensues... :)

------
mcarrano
Late last year a friend of mine was involved in a car accident.

The other driver was following the Google Maps directions on their phone which
told them to go down a one way street, it just happened to be the wrong
direction. Luckily no one was hurt.

People really need to pay attention when they drive and read the road signs.
Just because the GPS says to go down a street, doesn't mean you are allowed to
go down it the wrong way.

~~~
Piskvorrr
Yup, source data is one of the issues here: I had Waze send me up one-way
streets more than once. (Okay...there's a community map editor, let's fire
that up and fix this. "You can't edit a road, you need Magic Editor Points."
Oookay, how do I get Magic Editor Points? "You get points by making edits..."
and you need points to do that.

Well take that editor and shove it, I'm in no mood for a Catch-22.)

------
YZF
Reminds me of a time when I was using GPS to get around Vancouver Island.

Rather than taking me on the real highway I got directed to a "highway" that
was a narrow mountain logging road. I did realize exactly what was going on
and decided to keep going in my Subaru Outback for the sake of the adventure.
Eventually did get through. Then there was this time in Utah where my GPS
decided that following the powerlines on what was sometimes not even a road
was better than going around. One of the locals hearing the story later joked
you should never use a GPS in Utah. In both cases I knew the GPS was crazy but
as long as I could safely continue I went on for the sake of the adventure...
If things got too hairy I'd simply turn around...

------
Zigurd
I have a good counter-example. I was traveling to Shenzhen and I had a faxed
address and directions for the hotel. It was in Chinese, which I can't read.
About an hour into what should have been a 20 minute trip, it occurred to me I
was being taken somewhere entirely different. I turned on data roaming,
figuring that could not be more expensive than ending up two hours away from
my hotel at 3am. A search in English turned up local results with labels in
Chinese. The driver had to drop me at the taxi garage to wait for a driver
going in the right direction, so I got to see what a Chinese taxi company
looks like at 2am, but was spared a lengthier adventure.

------
thrownaway2424
Article freely conflates GPS with software navigation. Over of these things
works perfectly while the other has technical and usability quirks still not
solved.

~~~
pampa
The real mystery is, why he even bothered to take a rental car from keflavik
to his hotel in reykjavik, instead of just taking the shuttle.

~~~
the-dude
So smart. Maybe he planned a trip for the next day?

~~~
pampa
I wonder if it was trip to Siglufjörður, and he got there a day early.

------
njharman
How many people got lost and died or whatever before GPS navigation?

How many people have been lost in dangerous situation but were able to get to
safety due to GPS navigation?

How many people are balls stupid and will win a Darwin Award regardless of
what technology the use or don't.

~~~
kbart
Exactly. There were and always will be stupid people, it's not technologies to
blame. If not blindly following GPS to death, they would choke on spoon or
smth anyway. I'm actually glad to see that natural selection works even in the
digital age.

------
lolc
Lots of People rely on GPS navigation without checking. This tells us how well
it works and nothing else.

As an OSM-editor I know the map has many errors. (Not in my neighborhood mind
you.) So when I strapped a Garmin loaded with OSM to my bicycle I knew what to
expect. Sometimes I let it navigate my destination even when I know the route
I want to take. Then I watch the device give me suggestions to know whether
the map works. Found quite a few details that break navigation in OSM. Used
that way you get immune to the urge to follow everything the device tells you.
I have yet to attempt cycling down stairs that were recorded as path.

One common occurrence is the device insisting on you to turn around; its
estimates getting longer and longer. A few later villages later in your
journey you cross the nodes where the road was not correctly connected in OSM
and the device is suddenly happy again.

When I'm somewhere I don't know, and OSM is reliable in that area, I find
navigation very comfortable to use and it's saved me a lot of brain cycles.

------
proactivesvcs
Back in the summer I found an oddity on the map what I wanted to explore for
the sake of it. It was on the way back from a customer's house and I had the
rest of the afternoon off, so it was great timing.

I navigated the waypoints and tracks as the map directed but one of the
track's surfaces was degenerating beyond practical travel. I didn't mind a bit
of mud, but didn't feel like drowning :-)

After another bend, it was clear the mud wasn't getting better. I turned round
and headed back home, as the alternate routes weren't really practical. This
story ends with not a lot happening.

I find stories such as the headline, and others in the comments, are very
difficult to relate to. I suppose this is because I take in information I see
in real-time and allow myself to make decisions on the fly. I'm sure there's a
part of the brain involved which must be inhibited in some way that allows
blind following of instruction, be it made by a device or other way.

------
korginator
An even more troubling aspect is the increasing lack of ability for our pilots
to fly by hand instead of relying on the autopilot. A large number of
accidents today, like the Asiana 214 that went into the SFO airport sea wall,
could easily be avoided if either the PIC or the FO pay attention to what's
happening around them instead of having their eyes glued to the colorful shiny
dials. Take Asiana 214 - the PIC had pulled engine power to idle, flew far too
low on his approach to runway 28L, expected automation to pick up slack,
didn't bother to visually check if things were all right, and crashed into the
sea wall.

------
aaron695
I remember in Lebanon getting on the wrong bus with a slightly similar name
and ended up somewhere I wasn't supposed to be.

Dam GPS, these days I would have realised sooner and not had that adventure.

------
ars
Self Driving cars rely on exactly this same data. (Read all the stories from
other HN members in this thread on bad data, it's not always the user's
fault.)

Despite all the hype I don't expect general purpose self driving cars ever. At
best we'll have some interstate express lanes exclusively designed for self
driving cars, and that's about it.

~~~
ghaff
"Ever" is a long time. Though I agree insofar as it's probably further out
than a lot of people are assuming.

But, yes, it will be a long time before maps are sufficiently good across wide
areas of the rural US (much less the world as a whole) to enable self-driving.
The situation when you start talking about unpaved roads becomes even more
problematic.

~~~
anon4
Isn't it just a matter of the car paying attention to the road and if it
doesn't match up to the map's version, picking an alternate route?

~~~
ghaff
Autonomous vehicles today are highly dependent on having accurate high-
resolution road maps. Without them, you don't have a self-driving car. And,
when you talk about unpaved rural roads, there often aren't any alternative
routes.

Presumably if/when we get such vehicles, they'll only be approved to drive
some subset of roads and, if they encounter an unknown condition, they'll have
to stop and have a human driver take over in some manner.

------
sccxy
Why advertise yourself as dumbass with zero common sense?

------
Piskvorrr
Well look what the cat brought in :D

[https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-
xta1/t31.0...](https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-
xta1/t31.0-8/fr/cp0/e15/q65/12694731_10207803332897022_8128739970234650151_o.jpg?efg=eyJpIjoidCJ9)

