Oregon couple stranded following GPSr

There have been a number of these stories in the media of late... probably got a GPS as a Christmas present. It sounds like they had the unit set for "shortest route". But while the couple may have been unfamiliar with the GPS unit, who in their right mind would blindly drive up an unplowed forestry road in the middle of winter????

I wonder if the people at Garmin see stories like this and change the maps/routing to prevent repeat disasters?

Forestry Service roads and Un-plowed yet. Proves again that everyone should carry a Road Atlas in the pocket behind the driver. Very stupid judgment on their part.

I'm from Oregon, and I'd NEVER take icy/snowy roads.

Or else they could just take the car in for maintenance and get the nut behind the wheel replaced.

I thought I was about to hear about a winner of a Darwin Award but alas they are still with us.

stop and look at factors. in an area not familiar with. snowing and dark. these roads all look the same when visibility is bad. i use gps to locate my turnoffs when snowing or fog. its a helpful tool. in the end they should have stopped at a town and waited until weather was beter

This is user error, and nothing more. The GPS is a dumb device, and merely does what you program it to do. If a person thinks it's merely 'Plug n Play', you have these results.

The title of the thread says it all: Oregon couple stranded following GPSr. That's right, abdicate all personal responsibility for your mistake. After all, the device made you do it.

Judgement...where has that part of driving gone?

That's as bad as drivers who followed the recommendations of their GPS to drive through a field.. which ended up at the edge of a cliff.

To those who's GPS told them to turn onto the railroad tracks.. even though the crossing lights were on and a train was in the process of using the ongoing tracks!!

There has to be a point in time where someone needs to use a little common sense.. shouldn't they!!?

Nuvi1300WTGPS

To add to the list of ding bat moves, how about the tracker trailer driver who follows GPS directions onto a parkway (passenger cars only) and then gets stuck under an overpass. Traffic is backed up for miles, people can't get to work..etc. Common sense seems to be a vanishing concept.

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/05/driver_following_gp...

having driven on a forest road for 6 miles why would anyone take it if they didn't need to.

...had a name for persons like this - "high I.Q. moron"!

Mike

Some non-techie people I know look upon the GPS as magic. While trying to describe how the unit works and what it does I got a question from one of my listeners: Does it actually tell you when to stop at the red light/stop sign? I had to explain that the GPS does not replace your brain and you are still required to actually drive the car safely. It's only a navigation device and nothing more.

Even though GPSr's are pretty neat little devices they are not perfect. One still has to use some common sense when using them. If you follow the route/s provided by the unit without question (paying attention to where you are actually going) and you take a backroad that you normally wouldn't take, i.e., a regular road or highway, you might want to question the accuracy of the GPSr unit and pull out the ol' paper backup to prevent something like that from happening.