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Sanity -> RE: Couple stranded 3 days after GPS leads them astray (1/1/2010 3:59:11 PM)
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Butch, did you write this article?
quote:
GPS-led travel goes amiss; 3 Ore. parties rescued
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - In a holiday hurry, Jeramie Griffin piled his family into the car and asked his new GPS for the quickest way from his home in the Willamette Valley across the Cascade Range.
It said he could shave 40 minutes off the time of the roundabout route he usually takes to the in-laws' place. Following the directions, he and his wife headed east on Christmas Eve and into the mountains, turning off a state highway onto local roads and finally getting stuck in the snow.
They had no cell phone service and ran short on formula for their 11-month-old daughter. After taking exploratory hikes, trying to dig out and spending the night in their car, the distraught couple filmed a goodbye video.
Like two other parties of holiday travelers who followed GPS directions smack into Oregon snowbanks, Griffin and family were eventually rescued. But their peril left law enforcement officers and travel advisers perplexed about drivers who occasionally set aside common sense when their GPS systems suggest a shortcut.
"Did everybody just get these for Christmas?" asked Klamath County Sheriff Tim Evinger, leader of one rescue effort. In Griffin's case, in fact, the GPS device was a Christmas gift, from his parents. He used it for the first time to plan the trip to Central Oregon.
It's one he'd made many times before, following a route travelers have found reliable since at least the days of the Oregon Trail. But, he said, a shortcut the GPS device suggested was attractive.
"We were in such a hurry to get over there, we programmed it in the driveway and went ahead," he said. In hindsight, he said, he should have double checked the route against a paper map - and packed extra formula for the baby. "We would be better prepared for the unknown," he said.
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In Oregon, GPS systems can direct drivers to thousands of miles of Forest Service logging roads that lace the state's mountain ranges. In the winter, they are often plugged with snow.
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But, he said, it isn't as if people have just started getting lost in the woods. "In yesteryear, it was people not knowing how to read their maps," he said.
Evinger said the statewide task force on search and rescue he chairs will take up the question of GPS-led trips next week. He said it probably would focus on educational efforts rather than legislation.
Law enforcement officials and travel experts have a variety of recommendations for people who use GPS in the winter or in strange territory:
Use an old-fashioned paper map as a backup. Pack a survival kit for the winter. Configure your GPS for "highways only," or a similar setting, so that you don't get directed to byways in the winter. Top off your gasoline tank, and charge your cell phone batteries before going into remote areas. Pay attention to the weather.
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"You can't follow GPS blindly," said Hyde of the national AAA.
Says Dodds: "If you are following your GPS and all of a sudden you find yourself in the middle of nowhere with snow all around, don't go there. Turn around."
Full article at: http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100101/D9CUTBK81.html
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