Couple Taken 400 Miles Off Course By Trusting Their GPS
from the at-some-point,-don't-you-begin-to-question... dept
It really is amazing to see some of the stories about people shutting off their brains (and often their own eyes) in order to believe everything that their GPS device tells them. The latest example involves some Swedish tourists in Italy, who wanted to go to Capri, but mistyped it into the device as Carpi, an industrial town in Northern Italy, 400 miles away from the beautiful isle of Capri. Apparently, it didn't occur to them as they drove (and drove and drove) that perhaps things weren't right. According to tourist officials, after being informed, the couple got back in the car, and turned around to head in the right direction.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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In a related story, a kid was forced to eat a candy bar he didn't favor, when he shut off his brain and just allowed the vending machine to give him the candy bar corresponding to the (incorrect) button he pushed.
Scandal.
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Um. I never said it was about the GPS malfunctioning.
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This sounds like my roommate
As AC above pointed out, if they were 400mi away from Capri and also 400mi away from Carpi, I could understand. If they were 4mi away then they should have known something was wrong after driving for 30min.
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Misleading headline
Sausage fingered Couple Taken 400 miles off course by typing the wrong destination into their GPS, then not bothering to read the road signs.
This is about stupidity NOT about the technology.
Almost like when the stupid Stupid STUPID guy from the bay area lost his life and risked his family's life trying to cross the Oregon Cascades in a car on a back road in the dead of winter. Only because the GPS said it was shorter. He risked the lives of the searchers, cost the Counties, State and feds thousands of dollars and then the family claimed the state was at fault for not blocking the road.
This isn't about technology, it is about stupid people not knowing how to read a map, follow a compass, or ask a GPS to take them to the right town.
Your headline is disappointing sensationalism Mike.
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Alternately...
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Woww...
And the "misleading" headline says exactly what happened. They were taken 400 miles off course for trusting their GPS, when they should have had an iota of awareness about where the hell they were going.
Authors of posts 3, 5, and 6 are morons.
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Re: Woww...
Also, who types something into a GPS and doesn't check it at least once to make sure they put in the correct information. Hell, I double check my google maps directions or my map quest for errors against a map.
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It will be patented
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Yes, they fat fingered the name. No, it doesn't matter where they started.
If read anything other than this post (or knew the geography of italy) you would have known that Capri is in the south, Carpi is in the north. The southernmost point in Italy would not have you driving 4 hours to get to Capri. If you can't figure out that you are supposed to be going someplace in the south of the country and you have been traveling north for over a few hours, you are brain dead, and just trusting the SUV.
The other clue that should have tipped them off. Capri is an Island, miles away from mainland. Carpi is not an island, and completely land locked. If you dont realize you havent goen over water, you are a moron.
Glad they took it well.
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That should read GPS and not SUV. Dont know where that came from.
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but this isn't a case of a GPS malfunctioning but tourists unfamiliar with the area getting the name of a destination.
Um. I never said it was about the GPS malfunctioning."
No mike, you didn't say that nor did I say you did, instead you blamed the tourists for errant "trusting" their GPS, as if some error on the part of the GPS led them astray rather than an error on the part of the tourists.
Would you run a post about people who followed a map to the wrong city by getting the name wrong, saying "Couple Taken 400 Miles Off Course By Trusting Their Map"? I think not. It wasn't the GPS they were trusting so much as their data entry. It took them where they told it to, just like a map would, or a Google Maps print out. The GPS is essentially irrelevant to this story.
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No. I clearly stated in the post that they were at fault for mistyping the name into the GPS. But, that said, they THEN did trust the GPS for a great distance despite plenty of evidence they were heading the wrong way. They did, in fact, trust the GPS. Exactly what the story said.
You keep saying I said there was an error on the GPS. I did not. I said the people trusted the GPS after they input the wrong city. Which is exactly what happened.
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A better analogy than the ones being given in many of the comments here would be: Yesterday the bridge wasn't out and I drove over it. Today, I ask my friend if the bridge is out and he says "no". While I'm driving, I see a sign saying the bridge is out and it looks like part of it is missing, but I'm going to keep driving because I trust my friend. Friend = GPS; Friend's knowledge = Fat-finger mistake.
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The GPS did just it was supposed to do - so the error was a user error.
I travel regionally - and while I'm not opposed to a GPS, I just don't feel compelled to get one. The cool thing is; when I travel to many of these places; I don't need a thing to get there now since I know the route all by myself :)
If I was using a GPS, I'm not sure I would put in the effort to remember it.
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A Little Misleading...
It would be like telling people not to trust a calculator because if you punch in "9 + 3" it will give you 12 when you actually meant to type "6 + 3".
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Brain failure
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Technology and people: Two things which don't go well together.
The latest: our wonderful government scrambling to ban texting while driving due to a recent report that it's 23% more likely to cause accidents.
*sigh*
Personally, banning texting abilities from a cell PHONE would be a better law to pass.
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Re: Technology and people: Two things which don't go well together.
It's too easy to blame technology, but in the end it's the stupid users, not the stupid device.
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You keep saying I said there was an error on the GPS. I did not. I said the people trusted the GPS after they input the wrong city. Which is exactly what happened."
Really? Quote where I said you actually said that even once, let alone twice. If your factual reporting of the story is as flawed as your reporting on my easily verifiable posts is then I have even less faith in the OP.
"You keep saying I said"--You keep using that [phrase]. I do not think it means what you think it means. ...
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In your first comment, after calling this post "stupid" you said: "this isn't a case of a GPS malfunctioning but tourists unfamiliar with the area getting the name of a destination."
I don't see how one can read that other than you are saying we claimed that the GPS malfunctioned. We did not.
In your second comment, you wrote: "as if some error on the part of the GPS led them astray rather than an error on the part of the tourists."
Again, any clear reading of this sentence suggests you believe I said that there was an "error on the part of the GPS."
I did neither. I clearly stated that it was the tourists who were at fault, and the problem was that they put too much trust in what the device was telling them to do.
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Re: Re: Re: Assuming
End of story.
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The only thing you are successfully undermining here is (what little remains of) your own credibility. As the saying goes, intelligence is invisible to the man who has none.
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It is all in the headline, the body is ok.
Swedes miss Capri after GPS gaffe
Mike's headline is:
Couple Taken 400 Miles Off Course By Trusting Their GPS
I think the BBC headline is more to the point.
'By Trusting Their GPS' reads to me that they trusted their GPS but it let them down.
True it never says that the GPS malfunctioned or was inaccurate in Mike's write-up and he labels it as misuses of technology.
Those of us who follow Mike's informative and thought provoking posts expect controversy, humor and dissent. It seems many of us have a problem with the headline. It appears to be written to sensationalize the article not describe it. Don't expect that from Mike.
Perhaps there is something telling in that a large number of the comments are about the presentation of the post and not on core of the issue; what I believe the intent of the article was.
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Re: It is all in the headline, the body is ok.
Although even in the BBC headline, "GPS gaffe" could be read as "mistake made with a GPS" rather than "...by a GPS", so that would be technically accurate, too.
I think you guys are reading way too much into the headline. The data coming out of the GPS was incorrect for their situation, and instead of trusting their eyes and ears of what is going on in the real world around them, they trusted the computer-generated map on the screen. And the result is, it took them 400 miles off of their course.
That's the point of the story. They trusted the output without bothering to think about it, or questioning why what they saw differed with what the GPS said. And that's the headline.
The detail of the exact cause of the initial error is not spelled out in the headline; rather, you have to actually read the story to find out why the error occurred. In basic journalistic fashion (if I remember what I learned in grade school), the who/what/where/when/why/how is answered in the first (and only) paragraph. I'm not sure why you're expecting to see these details in the headline.
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GPS Data
Technology can be great, but you still have to use your common sense and often, not trust technology blindly.
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Tourist were coming from Venice, in the further north of Italy, Carpi is just a few hundreds Km away from there, near Bologna, Capri is far in the South, in front of Naples.
And it is an island...
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Not a GPS error
Also, Bruce. You are correct but I'll quibble about your choice of words. In Italy 'far' has a different meaning than it does in the US. The country is only about 18% larger than the US state of Michigan.
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Re: Not a GPS error
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Ridiculous Headline
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Re: Ridiculous Headline
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Idiots
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Never go anywhere you're unfamiliar with the roads without a road map, and one that shows a lot of detail if possible.
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