It used to be that the voice telling a motorist to “turn here” was coming from a passenger with a map splayed across his or her lap.
But increasingly the voice offering directions is the electronic one that emerges from a car’s global positioning system. And as The Wall Street Journal reported last week, the results of drivers’ blindly trusting this bit of technology can be amusing — or even downright scary.
One New Mexico motorist told the Journal of his GPS routing him up a meandering mountain road that led to a guardrail and a high cliff, when all he wanted was a detour around rush-hour traffic. Another motorist said a GPS shortcut in Wisconsin turned into a three-hour odyssey along a boulder-ridden stretch of road shrouded by overhanging trees.
In a third, and more terrifying, tale a 70-year-old Texas motorist said his GPS actually routed him into oncoming traffic. (He didn’t follow the advice.)
Clifford Nass, a Stanford University communications professor, said that since the 19th century’s Industrial Revolution, humans have been increasingly content to ignore common sense and “let technology tell us what’s going on.”
The problem, however, is that although GPS may be the latest gadget, it is not always equipped with the most up-to-date information. Most GPS users likely have at least one story of ending up at a dead-end road, an empty parking lot or in front of a stranger’s home.
Keeping these devices loaded with accurate, up-to-the-moment map information still is “pure science fiction,” Alain De Taeye, CEO and founder of the Tele Atlas mapping software company, told the Journal.
In such fast-growing and ever-changing areas as Southern Nevada, a GPS is probably more of a dashboard decoration than a traveling tool. Here, motorists will have better luck if they tune out the digital voice and tune in to the voice of common sense — the one that says, “Pull over and ask for directions.”
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