RECALCULATING!
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 ...
it is to me :)
when you work in a city of 8 million, “The middle of nowhere” takes on a whole different meaning.
I consider PA untamed land lol
EPA is getting “gentrified” with the younger set moving in. There’s a HUGE commercial real estate project getting built there right now close to the IKEA store. East San Jose? — no way, Jose.
I like this one, these British guys actually got TomTom to record a GPS voice with the actor Brian Blessed after they made this demo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JpKuYbJQK4
My sister and BIL came to visit one year when I was then living in Silicon Valley (San Jose, CA). We went to have dinner with a sibling one evening in an area of town known as Quincy Oaks. On the way back, they were relying on their brand-new GPS device to find the best way back to the hotel, when I suddenly realized we were going to pass directly through the area between the Eastridge Mall and the Story and King crossroads (for those of you out of town, that had become as of the early eighties the crown of gang-ruled territories).
I volubly (and vociferously) forced then to backtrack and find a highway to the side that would get us past the area until we could have a direct shot back to our destination that would not entail any travel through those areas. They were markedly annoyed, but after I explained later what exactly they might have gotten into, they grudgingly admitted I might have been right in the end.
Pfft! Tourists!
What is Alicia and her six year old doing alone in Death Valley in August?
the same technology can help protect us against getting mugged in dangerous neighborhoods....
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080422/025145916.shtml
RECALCULATING!
A GPS doesn’t compensate for a complete lack of common sense, and it always pays to have a backup. Any adult should be able to tell what direction they are going, day or night, if it’s not cloudy and they know approximately what time and season it is.
An analogy would be that even if you have a calculator, it’s good to be able to at least have an idea of the magnitude of a result, in case you fat-fingered the numbers.
“for getting around staten island and brooklyn, it was good.”
Well, I love GPS because I always get lost. (Although I have learned to stop and go back before I get really, really lost as someone else mentioned.)
But, the one in my Elantra is just backasswards when I try and use it by my office in Basking Ridge, NJ.
Now this is a suburban area, but I work in a fairly large office building, there’s a hospital right near us, and there are big companies around there, Verizon for example.
When you leave my office you go down a hill to a main intersection (there’s an entrance to route 79 right there!) and it ALWAYS tells me to go right, but it should tell me to go left. It’s like it thinks I’m coming from the opposite direction. Once I go left anyway it’s OK.
Don’t want to playing that game in Death Valley!
“it finally dawned on me that some streets that were expected to be done by so and so time were on the map.
they were never done :)”
I think that’s called a “paper road”.
Basing Ridge? we’re practically neigbhors :)
my one issue is the GPS always starts with directions from the main road down from my block, instead on my block.
not sure why
is that a real term? i’m pretty gullible :)
for a city that’s known to forgo projects or delay them forever, that was pretty presumptuous.
I agree...the poor little boy died because his mother had no sense. How do you even go on after such a horrible mistake.
I’ve almost always trusted my instincts before anything or anyone else...so far so good.
I think that, other than travel in desert and other wildernesses, GPS units are very useful. They are not infallible, but neither are maps. I like Garmin stand-alone units. Many people find the units pre-installed in cars much harder to use. I wonder which Ms Sanchez, one of the victims in the article, was using.
Drinking urine will kill a kid in no time. Maybe avoid wandering into a desert?
You are joking, yes? You have never met any one of these people in real life?
I live in an undeveloped bit of land just off of the local National Forest, and the only way to get to where I am is to follow some of the barely-usable Forest-Service trails (which are not rated to handle even ATV-traffic upon them) with many branches before you get to the height above sea-level where I am, but I get these roo-baits every year asking all manner of idiotic questions time and time again. Even though I am roughly five miles out and seven miles up from the nearest road...
"What's the best way out of here?"
_ I dunno, mate, why don't you just try keeping on traveling downhill, as the only branches are on the upward way.
"Where does this trail lead to?"
_ Ummm, UPWARDS???
"Is there another way out from here?"
_ No. Try going back the way you traveled from.
"Are there really any bears out here?"
_ Yes. Mobs of them. They will mob-assault you and then gang-rape you on the way out simply because they smell the candy and fruit-juice drinks on your breath as you travel.
"Do you have any water?"
_ No.
"Where's your bathroom?"
_ Down the road a bit then look for the bushes -then find a spot and make certain you have at least a handful of leaves available.
*grumble*
You would not believe the mental midgets that travel the country to this day.
Pre-trip planning is the real clue to gettin' 'er done....
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