Tourists follow GPS, drive into sea Dodgy GPS systems have claimed three more victims, after a trio of Japanese tourists tried to reach Stradbroke Island off Australia’s Gold Coast in a small car. The Bayside Bulletin and Redland Times report that the three, despite the presence of lots and lots of water between their origin and intended destination, took their …
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In the days before Google maps I was stumped by a map (physical paper one) that showed a road crossing the Danube between Slovakia and Hungary. It turned out that the 'road' on the map actually referred to a ferry crossing. there was an ex-bridge (pylons mid-river without the bridge deck going over) that had been destroyed during WW2. The locals seemed quite amused when asked about the bridge!
However I did choose to believe my eyes rather than the map
We do know that GPSes in Japan are far much more well behaved than those sold elsewhere. While those sold elsewhere plots to kill their owners, the Japanese ones are like Japanese wives: loyal, unassuming and will take a bullet for their owner if their owner is in danger. Remember, the Japanese love their robots, and their robots love them back.
Those tourists probably assumed all GPS devices are the same, a very deadly assumption.
Terminator, because this is a ROTM article after all.
>>Japanese ones are like Japanese wives: loyal, unassuming and will take a bullet for their owner if their owner is in danger
Er, it seems you know nothing about Japanese wives!
An iron fist in a velvet glove is how they're often described. It's no surprise that Japanese companies traditionally pay a husband's salary directly into the bank account of his wife.
A) The GPS wasn't just a toy. It was their equivalent of a map, and in this case even a map could've made a mistake and put a road where there shouldn't be.
B) These people were tourists, unfamiliar with the area, and it's not unheard of to get from a mainland to a nearby island by way of a bridge or causeway.
Sorry Charles, living as I do overlooking the bay and staring at the island whilst sat at my computer, I reckon that the 10 bloody miles of water between the mainland and the island (even at low tide) should give anyone with half a brain pause for thought. It never looks remotely possible, even at the lowest of low tides...
You may be familiar with the area. They *weren't*. And like I said, causeways are possible, as are low-tide roads as others have noted (another thing: they may not be familiar with local tidal patterns which differ from place to place). They didn't know the condition of the roads there, probably figured the path to be a low-tide road, miscalculated, and got stuck. Crap happens.
Familiar with the area?! If my map said "turn here", and "here" appeared to be 15km of water, I would want to see a damn great sign saying "causeway" and giving tide times before I just drove into the sea.
Most Australian hire-car documents are very clear that the car is not insured when taken off metalled roads. Maybe when these people get the bill they'll reflect on engaging their brains next time they're behind the wheel.
> Crap happens.
Note once you're past about 2 years old it doesn't, it generally requires some effort to produce.
Great fun watching the causeway to Lindisfarne (Holy Island) in Northumbria as the tide comes in and the last drivers try to get back to the mainland before being stuck for a few hours. There are even refugees on rather tall frames. It is a lot further than you think and the tide moves much faster than one would think possible.
too true, turn of your toys... that includes speedometers, fuel guages, indicators (god help us you might get distracted by your indicators and pull out without looking), brakes, windscreen wipers, lights... oh and whilst you are at it the ignition.
numpty. it's not a toy it's a tool and, as any oter tool, if used inappropriately will not give the desited result.
Clarkson syndrome --
'I'm a great driver, fantastic, in fact. Yet when I'm asked to drive at no more than 50 mph on a motorway I bleat about having to watch the speedo all the time and I then claim it's dangerous.'
Odd how 'cruise control' never gets a mention.
Looking at a tiny screen is no substitute for looking out of a big screen now and then just to check you're still on the road'
TwatNav will be with us forever.
Sat navs, when used properly, are very helpful.
Saved me quite a bit of time in Milton Keynes (and visitors to their fare non-city will probably agree) that its difficult to navigate, even after checking maps in advance and street-viewing my route, as everything looks the same.
It can also be safer. Work dumped me in the Netherlands with a motorway trip in a hire car. First time driving on the opposite side of the road, with the body of the car at the opposite side (extra concentration to line yourself up with the lane) and speeds in KPH instead of MPH to fight with, without having to deal with locations in a language you are not familiar with and trying to spot them in overhead gantries.
Using the sat nav helped free up concentrating on my location so I could use it to watch the road.
Note, that I said I was watching the road. If it did point me at a cliff edge, I would stop.
Completely agree. Recently had the same experience, except I was in Boston in the US.
First time on the wrong side of the road in a left-hand drive car was the 20 mile drive to the hotel. I would not want to do that without a GPS, i did not know that motorway junctions there sometimes have two exits depending which way you want to go on the road you're joining.
I've had a few WTFs from the GPS too though. TomTom tried to take me down a farm track going from Leatherhead to a hotel on Epsom Downs once. I just ignored it, and it recalculated - I think some people forget the GPS will recalculate the route if you go wrong, and think they will get lost if they don't obey every instruction.
A SatNav is a tool, not a toy. A very useful too at that. Only a poor workman blames his tools.
Or are you one of those people who have the radio turned off, passengers ordered to be silent and are a Zen Master who can actually devote 100% attention onto the single task of driving for multiple hours at a time?
A properly positioned SatNav is no more distracting than checking your speedo. Or don't you do that either?
One day, coming home, I left the satnav on long after I knew where I was going. It confidently told me to turn right down a lane I know leads to a ford that is only suitable for horses. I ignored it, obviously, but I'm surprised the river isn't full of Japanese tourists.
GO, because, well, the satnav INSISTED.
Are you sure it's only suitable for horses. There's a lane not far from us with a ford which a lot of people are scared of, but I've driven it many a time. I would avoid it if the stream was in flood, but a satnav couldn't know about that could it? An old feller who lives nearby assures me that back in the fifties everybody used to use that road, but fewer and fewer people use it today because, as he put it, "everybody's nesh these days".
I was talking to one of my neighbours a few weeks ago and he told me how useless satnavs were, because a visiting friend's satnav had tried to direct him up a lane nearby which was he said "completely impassible by motor vehicles". I was about to argue with him when an Asda delivery van emerged from the lane. Yes it's narrow, badly surfaced and at one point very steep, but it is still technically a public road and can be driven. I did it in a Nissan Micra of all things. It's not a sensible route and for preference I would go the long way round, but there's nothing actually wrong with the route. I've noticed that satnav tends to suggest this route when people select shortest or most economical. By default I think satnav should be set to simplest.
with people and GPS, they seem to think its a substitute for their brain!
People driving into the sea, lorries getting stuck between buildings, I mean, what is wrong with people.
Surely if they are That Thick, what are they doing driving a car in the first place!
Geez the shear stupidity of people.
... tell you which drive is "possible" and which is not. As in "the GPS insisted the drive was possible".
That's what the extra warning message says that you have to confirm each and every time you start up that thing. Which was invented due to such idiots.
As a SatNav maker I would sue them for such idiotic statements.
Indeed, but the media always repeat these claims without even bothering to check the facts. A driver near us got stuck up a public footpath and claimed the mistake was down to his satnav. The local paper ran the story under a headline something like "Satnav Directs Driver Up Footpath". Various locals tried checked their satnavs and not one could find the footpath in question on their maps. The path wasn't even a public right of way, just a cut-through between two factories.
The point being that it has now become standard practice to blame satnavs for the sort of mistake that people have been making since way before satnav was around. And of course that it's also standard practice for people to accept this explanation without question.
Well sort of. Wasn't daft enough to drive into the water.
However, it's the satnav settings that are important here. Usually satnavs by default say yes to motorways, toll roads and ferries. It's the last one. Never mind your choice of quickest, shortest or most economical, if you allow satnav to include ferries then it will. That's all very well but it obviously doesn't know when the ferries are. Hence the "In 500 yards turn left" and all you see is an expanse of water. If for example you choose 'quickest' and include ferry crossings the nav will make the assumption that a ferry will be waiting for you at every crossing.
Try driving from Edinburgh to Bowmore on Islay with the satnav on default settings and you'll see exactly what I mean!
I did a coach tour from SaiGon/Ho Chi Minh City to Ha Noi and used my Garmin GPS to record the journey.
When I uploaded it to my laptop, I discovered, according to Garmin, most of the trip was done between 10 and 15 kilometres OUT TO SEA.
Same thing on another Garmin on the way back.
Firstly - the GPD might have been wrong ie. showing a road where there wasn't one. The fact that it plotted a course to the island suggests this may be the case. I have seen a few GPS aps in Australia that have very creative ideas about the nature of reality (roads that don't exist, guiding you onto an expressway going the wrong direction).
Secondly - have a look at the photos and the weather. Dead calm sea, high hazy overcast, sun directly overhead, so no clear shadows - these conditions can produce a whiteout-like effect where it becomes impossible to see the horizon. The calm water reflects the hazy sky, and all you can see is hazy grey-ish white. Combine that with an inversion layer over the water or the island and you get prime conditions for mirages - which can look like roads. To someone already a bit nervous due to language, a dodgy GPS that keeps telling them to turn left in 100 metres and the guys in the back having a laugh I can see how you might make an error.
There are roads in our glorious nation's capital that will be dual-carriage freeways, letting you tear along at 100km/h that suddenly turn into empty fields as you round a corner - no signpost, no warning, the map even shows a road... that hasn't been finished. The government will get around to it one of these decades.
A lot of mileage has been made in the press here of 'haha stoopid toorists!' but the locals make bigger and more spectacular blunders all the time.
To be fair to the Tourists (or is that have some fun at their expense?) - a few unmentioned points:
1) it had rained every day of their 6 day Holiday, so maybe they just thought that Roads covered in Water were normal in Australia.
2) they thought the GPS was saying it would navigate them to a road
- while I am guessing that the GPS was saying to return to nearest Road they probably were not listening to it in Japanese and misunderstood its instruction as a promise.
3) they only got 500 meters but I bet if they had a longer run up and a more powerful car they might have got further, and after all there was probably only about 14,500 meters to go.
4) the rental agreements I have seen are not clear that Cars are not amphibious and in Australia everything is upside down and back to front so maybe they just expected (I couldn't very well say that they thought, could I?)
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