Not just in the use of your brain, but you can wind up doing actually stupid things by taking routes that are hazardous.
I know a couple who were driving from SW PA to SE CT; they programmed "shortest route" into their GPS. The route took them through the Lincoln Tunnel into midtown Manhattan, where they promptly became lost at 2AM because the GPS couldn't get a decent signal amongst the buildings. (Yes, they called me for help and yes, I provided directions with interspersed pointed comments as to their sanity and whether they could manage to feed themselves without assistance.)
Use a frelling map and check the GPS route, people.
It’s Usually The Rich That Behave Poorly
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It's a lousy-ass GPS that can't get a signal in mid-Manhattan, mine manages to get a signal from deep within slot canyons.
But yeah, there's some real killers in there. I asked my GPS to route me from Darwin, CA, to Panamint Springs, CA. It sent me down into a wash with two-foot-deep sand and over a waterfall. Now, I didn't go that way because I knew it was full of shit (the "road" goes *around* the waterfall on nearby Zinc Hill, and that has been true since it was built in the early 1920's, I don't know WTF is with the GPS companies thinking it goes *through* the waterfall), but I can just imagine some German tourists in a minivan following their GPS and getting hopelessly sunk up to their hubs in that sandy wash (no chance of going over the waterfall thankfully -- there is a thick steel gate closing the wash off from vehicular access about 1/2 mile above the waterfall).
So anyhow, it isn't GPS that makes you stupid. The dead German tourists recently found in the Death Valley didn't have GPS in 1996 when they took a wrong turn down a road utterly unsuited for their minivan, got stuck, then struck out to the south on foot into some utterly inhospitable land with two young children in tow (rather than walk back to a cabin that has running water). Stupidity simply is, whether technology is involved or not :-(.
- Badtux the Mapping Penguin
If common sense were common, everyone would have it..
Having the GPS in the Iphone I've found it more than mildly unreliable. Works fine for where am I now and letting me see maps but for routing, feh!
Also the online mapping programs are pretty brain dead as well.
I still travel with a door pocket full of paper maps.
Eck!
Best one I ever heard was one that happened in Westchester County, NY - on the commuter rail line (I work for the railroad, and can attest to the veracity of it, having spoken firsthand to the cop who took the report).
The elderly couple were following their GPS' directions, and when it admonished them to "Turn left NOW", they did - directly onto the track right-of-way.
Fortunately, they were able to exit the vehicle BEFORE the train made a tinfoil ball out of it. But even the cops said they'd never heard THAT excuse for driving on the tracks before.
Much of the highway base map data is inaccurate. I tried to use my Garmin in my car on a highway trip, and the poor dear was so confused. It kept thinking I had taken an exit, as it did not have a high resolution grasp of the interstate. "Turn .. Left! Turn .. right! .... Recalculating...."
I find the aviation data much better, thank goodness. Not that it is my primary reference. Just "situational awareness".
Does the iphone really have a GPS? I thought it was doing a trick interpolating from cell phone towers and signal strengths.
The iPhone 3G has a real GPS, the original iPhone didn't. It's not a great GPS but it works. The 3GS supposedly has a better GPS chip in it. The iPhone also does the interpolation thingy too when it can't get a GPS signal such as when you're indoors, using either the phone network or WiFi (if you're connected to a WiFi hotspot that's in the geolocation database). The interpolation thingy isn't perfect but works well enough to go into the Google Maps application and tell it, "find me some restaurants around here" and get a list of plausible places to eat -- a nice thing to have when you're traveling, even if the list is very incomplete.
The iPhone 3GS might even be fast enough to run "real" GPS software. My 3G isn't, but... (shrug).
- Badtux the Technology Geek Penguin
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