
Death by GPS: why do we follow digital maps into dodgy places? - zeveb
http://arstechnica.com/cars/2016/05/death-by-gps/
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jlg23
I think this is more a problem of us being taught in school not to question
authorities "who ought to know better" and thereby unlearning to rely on
instincts. Teachers in school, GPS on the road, weather forecasts or any apps
we use when we can use some extra expertise. I've:

* told a friend in a coastal desert village "It's going to rain, better get the laundry from the roof." \- He grew up there and never left village town but still, instead of relying on instincts, took out his smartphone and checked the forecast "No way, mate, no rain today." He had not finished his sentence when the first drop hit the screen of his smartphone.

* pointed fellow passengers on a boat to the rising moon. They took out their smartphone, argued it cannot be the moon because their app says it's going to rise in another direction. Then the app corrected itself, now pointing at the clearly visible rising moon.

* spent a beautiful morning with a flatmate in the garden of our Venice Beach apartment talking about how beautiful and warm the day is. We go back inside, she looks at the weather app and exclaims "holy shit, it's hot outside!"

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stopruiningit
A long time ago I was working on a mobile application that used OpenStreetMap
data for navigation. I was always really scared that something like what was
mentioned in the article would happen. Its a difficult problem to solve
because you need so much robust information, and that information can rapidly
change as well due to construction or weather (roads can be seasonal etc).

I can only imagine this problem getting worse with self-driving smart cars
where the driver probably won't paying _any_ attention to the road. Imagine
taking a nap and waking up stranded somewhere with no mobile signal.

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ghaff
As I commented on another link to this article, the majority (though not all)
of the real horror stories tend to be in the American West. The real issue
there is that, contra the full life experience of many visitors, a lot of
roads are seasonal, very rough, or just plain undriveable without high
clearance 4WD and the ability to operate it.

This is really a maps issue rather than a GPS issue. And there have been
tragedies based on people following very secondary roads on paper maps as
well. The issue is that there's not really an easy classification scheme.
After all, there are well graded dirt roads that can be easily travelled by
passenger cars that steadily degrade to "I can't believe someone could drive
this in a car" levels. And all ranges of roads in between.

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hackuser
I read an article about the U.S. military's research into AI. Their conclusion
is that AI isn't reliable or creative enough to be put in charge; a human
needs to be in charge who takes the AI's input, but overrules it as needed.

