Posted on 02/11/2016 8:31:39 PM PST by Utilizer
Five harrowing days after becoming stuck on a remote backcountry road in Death Valley National Park in August 2009, Alicia Sanchez lay down next to her Jeep Cherokee and prepared to die.
Then she heard a voice.
"I called as I approached, asking if she was okay," wrote Ranger Amber Nattrass in a park report. "She was waving frantically and screaming, 'My baby is dead, my baby is dead.' "
In the SUV, Nattrass found Sanchez's lifeless 6-year-old son Carlos on the front seat. "She told me they walked 10 miles but couldn't find any help (and) had run out of water and had been drinking their own urine," Nattrass wrote.
"She turned down a wrong road," Nattrass said in a recent interview. "She said she was following her GPS unit."
Danger has long stalked those who venture into California's desert in the heat of summer. But today, with more people pouring into the region, technology and tragedy are mixing in new and unexpected ways.
"It's what I'm beginning to call death by GPS," said Death Valley wilderness coordinator Charlie Callagan. "People are renting vehicles with GPS and they have no idea how it works and they are willing to trust the GPS to lead them into the middle of nowhere."
The number of people visiting Death Valley in the summer, when temperatures often exceed 120 degrees, has soared from 97,000 in 1985 to 257,500 in 2009. That pattern holds at Joshua Tree as well, which recorded 128,000 visitors in the summer of 1988. Last year: 230,000.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
i dont know what Joshua Tree is. Should i be embarrassed or VERY embarrassed?
There used to be an app that let you avoid high concentrations of melanin when traveling but it was protested to death.
“A lowly GPS device does not know to stay away from dangerous areas.”
They could easily program one that does, but there would be an outcry about the “racist” GPS, and it would get boycotted, like that “Ghetto Tracker” app.
It’s in San Bernardino county east of San Berdoo. Beautiful place for ocotilla and high desert life. It’s at least a national monument, maybe national park.
Why are any of these people there in the first place? I call this my biggest TV inspired fear: dying in the desert. But I guess I’m right to be afraid, it seems to happen quite regularly.
There are no Jose’s in downtown Oakland...
You are committing the Fallacy of Denying the Antecedent:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denying_the_antecedent
This ditz (her actions indicate a tremendous lack of good judgement) may very well have gotten lost even if accompanied by a guide dog and a troop of Boy Scouts.
[...] and its battery wont die
Yeah, and maps don't get soiled, torn, or blown away by the wind. I doubt that this ditz could even read a map. She probably would have had better luck leaving a trail of breadcrumbs behind her.
Too bad about her 6-year-old son, though. Darwin at work.
Regards,
Happens to me everytime I drive to Hawaii.
You are implying that there are maps which are color-coded to indicate the ethnic make-up and/or crime rates of various neighborhoods.
That's rassis!
Regards,
Once, we drove to Monument Valley in Utah from Chinle in Arizona using our GPS. Leaving Monument Valley for the trip back our GPS directed us to go in the opposite direction than we came. It then sent us down a narrow road along the edge of a butte, and then into the desert along a dirt road. We followed the GPS as it directed us onto one dirt road after another each less traveled and well marked than the one before. Soon, we were literally in the middle of nowhere, with nothing in sight, no mark of human habitation seen within the last hour. Finally even the last trace of a road vanished, and we were left in the desert, surrounded by powdery sand of uncertain depth, although the GPS told us were on a numbered state highway and beckoned us on further into the nothingness. Had anything happened, had the car been stuck in the sand, or anything, we would have died. Very gently, I inched the car around to go back the other way, and it was hours before we arrived back in Monument Valley. Suddenly the GPS unit flipped its directions around and sent us back to Chinle the way we had come in the first place.
Was, haben Sie etwa ein Problem damit?!
Regards,
Indeed. My GPS always wants to send me through downtown Baltimore, which is as bad as Oakland.
I always print a Google map of the place I am going and use that along with the GPS. The GPS and I always get into disagreements about the route.
“I had a GPS once that kept telling me to go into downtown Oakland. No Way Jose.”
Mine finds all kinds of weird ways to go, but it hasn’t actually tried to kill me yet.
Suburban NJ isn’t exactly “the middle of nowhere.” And it’s not normally 120 degrees in the shade for weeks on end, around the clock.
Mapsco Maps in Dallas had a street showing as blocked, by our old house in Oak Cliff (now part of Dallas TX). Any other company's map which showed that blockage was considered as theft of Mapsco IP. We only found out when we tried to have it fixed on the maps.
GPS maps have a similar, if not identical, form of copyright protection.
Back when I was in high school (and Nixon was president), we could take a geography class as an elective. And the college I went to had a whole Geography department.
Well, that elective was later eliminated from my high school, and the college closed down the entire Geography department. Probably to make room for Gender Studies, or something like that.
I doubt if anybody under 30 can read a paper map. I held out until about four years ago when I got my first iPhone 4s. But you don’t have to get far out of urban areas for it to become useless.
I download GaiaGPS maps in advance so I don’t need a cellular data connection. But I still have paper maps,in the glove box.
Actually I am from out of the area..but Oakland’s reputation preceeds it.
Didn’t know about the others though.
yes indeed, all this new-fangled technological whiz-bang krapo just ain’t fully reliable yet....
(soon, you can entrust your life to Micros*ft to automatically drive you to Hawaii)
Micros*ft — an amazingly public admission about what is usually considered a disability of a much more private nature
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