News reports confirm that Kim and his family took a route noted for its hostile winter conditions.
""Authorities say the cyber-savvy family may have plucked the route from Grants Pass to Gold Beach from an online mapping service, unaware of the elements," AP reported.
"Despite its impassable snowdrifts and single lane, Bear Camp Road is offered as the preferred route on some websites and on-board-directions software available on some new cars. And most of those have no business in those mountains in the winter."
However from another AP story, we can infer that the Kims were not using a satnav device after all.
"Driving south on Interstate 5, the Kims had missed the turnoff to the coast and instead drove through the Siskiyou National Forest.
"They passed signs warning that Bear Camp Road may be blocked by snow, but kept going. At times, James had to stick his head out the window to see through the falling snow, said state police Lt. Gregg Hastings.
They descended into a confusing warren of logging roads.
By the time they turned around, they were 15 miles off Bear Camp Road and stopped where they hoped to be spotted from the air, fearing they were running out of gas, searchers said. "
Whatever satnav's foibles, problems tend to occur through creating unrealistic expectations, not through getting lost. We may yet be looking at a more traditional Petrol Tank error.
Friday, 8 December 2006
Thursday, 7 December 2006
Lost
I never knew James Kim. I'd never even heard of him before he was lost in Oregon, and had never read anything he wrote before he died. But it seems appropriate to dedicate this, the first post of SatNav Errors, to his memory. At the time of writing I'm not sure of the circumstances that led to his car getting stuck in the mountains, but at least one blogger has speculated that it was a satnav error that led him and his family astray.
James Kim was a technology writer. He was taking his family on a road trip through unfamiliar roads across beautiful mountains. It is hard to imagine someone with an interest in gadgets both personally and professionally not taking this opportunity to make the most of a satnav system.
Prompted by radio speculation as to whether satnav had a played a part in the Kim family predicament, Microacer, having himself had the experience of being led by satnav into a firing range, decided to check the route that Google Maps or Mapquest would suggest for the route from Grants Pass to Gold Beach. He found that some of the roads recommended by Google, which perhaps derive from similar databases used by satnav routefinders, are only open in the summer.
I experienced a pale echo of this experience last summer. I was on a road trip with my family in north-west Italy. We had been delighted by the performance of our own GPS gadget, a ViaMichelin X-950T, with a range of voices in different languages, but whose winsome English voice by common consent was much the nicest. We dubbed her Charlotte Pam.
It had been a wet holiday so far. Faced with another day of apprently constant rain, and not being the hardy sort who enjoy stomping through wet undergrowth, we decided to drive around beautiful Lake Orta, preferably descending from the heights down to the lakeside. The map didn't show a road, but it was too small scale and in any case Charlotte Pam seemed to know a way.
I turned off the main road and we began our descent. Occasionally Charlotte Pam would give us a "Turn left" at a hairpin bend, when to do otherwise would have been suicidal. But often there seemed to be a little pathway going down a steeper way. This perhaps gave a clue that her database was to say the least a bit, er, dated.
The road itself got smaller, and steeper. I hoped we wouldn't meet another car coming the other way. We needn't have worried. Where we were going, no cars came from.
The rain intensified. As the road continued to dwindle and my daughters began to protest, I persevered. I stayed the course.
"At the junction, turn left". The junction in question gave onto a small road down the forested mountainside that seemed to be inclined at about 45 degrees. It was marked with a white circle ringed with red: the international sign for "No access".
I pressed on. I told myself that the road was bound to open out again once we got close enough to the lake. It was lucky that with Charlotte Pam we could enjoy the luxury of finding routes that were denied to those constrained by conventional maps. We just had to get past this rocky patch.
We turned left again. The road was now only just wide enough for the car to squeeze through. It was rocky indeed: On one side were rocks and brambles, which scratched the paintwork. The other side was a sheer drop into a steep forest.
By now at least part of my reason for pressing on was fear at the prospect of having to reverse up what was not much more than a donkey track. We certainly couldn't turn round.
At last we came to a bend to the right. The road petered out to a muddy track, next to a deserted church structure worthy of the Blair Witch Project. On our left, through the pelting rain we could see what looked like a half-finished house. It was inhabited, but only by a fierce guard dog.
At this point I had to stop, get out and see what became of the track that disappeared to the right behind the church. After passing over a small crumbling concrete platform about five feet wide propped on rusty struts over a precipice, I could just see that the track became a footpath: the sort that in happier times and better weather might have made for quite a pleasant walk downwards to the still-invisible lake.
As I walked back to the car I felt real fear. I could not see how we could get the car, a Passat Estate, back up the road we had come down. Even if we could turn round, the rain would make the rocks slippery. And there was no-one about to help.
I got in the car and gingerly tried to turn it around. Mercifully we'd stopped at the first and only place where a three-point turn was physically possible. Next we tried driving very slowly up the track, but as I'd feared the rocks got us when we tried to turn right. The front wheels spun noisily but helplessly and began to smoke, which scared the children more than anything so far.
Thinking of people escaping ruts in the desert, or in the snow, I had the idea of bringing out our picnic rug to get some traction, but it was no good. The rug just melted between the tyres and the rocks, and we were stuck.
At this point, as the time approached 5.00 pm with the threat of encroaching darkness, I reflected that even if we found a farm in the area they wouldn't have a tractor. Tractors make no sense in the mountains -- except perhaps as a paying service to drag tourists out of satnav traps of their own making.
We walked up the hill, and that was when our luck changed, and our story therefore became less interesting. We found three Swiss second-homers, a father, his son and his son's partner, working on the chalet next to the "No Access" sign. They gallantly offered to come down and give us a push, saying that we were the second group of people to come to grief down there. I was not optimistic that we could be saved merely by human muscle-power, but they did it. They got us over the hump and they and the rest of my family followed on foot as I gingerly retraced our tyre-tracks back up to safety.
James Kim and his family might well have had a similar experience to ours, right up until the point where we managed to find help. The difference was that they were in serious mountain conditions, in the snow and in winter. And there was clearly no human habitation for miles around.
By now satnav errors are a familar part of the minor news item landscape. We're all familiar with the routine: BMW driver (for some reason it tends to be BMW drivers) places more trust in his satnav than in his own eyes and ends up in the drink. Or in a sandpile. Or on a railway track.
If it is true that James Kim died as a result of a satnav error, it places a whole new perspective on what has tended to be an "...and finally" type of story. SatNav errors have become a matter of life and death.
James Kim was a technology writer. He was taking his family on a road trip through unfamiliar roads across beautiful mountains. It is hard to imagine someone with an interest in gadgets both personally and professionally not taking this opportunity to make the most of a satnav system.
Prompted by radio speculation as to whether satnav had a played a part in the Kim family predicament, Microacer, having himself had the experience of being led by satnav into a firing range, decided to check the route that Google Maps or Mapquest would suggest for the route from Grants Pass to Gold Beach. He found that some of the roads recommended by Google, which perhaps derive from similar databases used by satnav routefinders, are only open in the summer.
I experienced a pale echo of this experience last summer. I was on a road trip with my family in north-west Italy. We had been delighted by the performance of our own GPS gadget, a ViaMichelin X-950T, with a range of voices in different languages, but whose winsome English voice by common consent was much the nicest. We dubbed her Charlotte Pam.
It had been a wet holiday so far. Faced with another day of apprently constant rain, and not being the hardy sort who enjoy stomping through wet undergrowth, we decided to drive around beautiful Lake Orta, preferably descending from the heights down to the lakeside. The map didn't show a road, but it was too small scale and in any case Charlotte Pam seemed to know a way.
I turned off the main road and we began our descent. Occasionally Charlotte Pam would give us a "Turn left" at a hairpin bend, when to do otherwise would have been suicidal. But often there seemed to be a little pathway going down a steeper way. This perhaps gave a clue that her database was to say the least a bit, er, dated.
The road itself got smaller, and steeper. I hoped we wouldn't meet another car coming the other way. We needn't have worried. Where we were going, no cars came from.
The rain intensified. As the road continued to dwindle and my daughters began to protest, I persevered. I stayed the course.
"At the junction, turn left". The junction in question gave onto a small road down the forested mountainside that seemed to be inclined at about 45 degrees. It was marked with a white circle ringed with red: the international sign for "No access".
I pressed on. I told myself that the road was bound to open out again once we got close enough to the lake. It was lucky that with Charlotte Pam we could enjoy the luxury of finding routes that were denied to those constrained by conventional maps. We just had to get past this rocky patch.
We turned left again. The road was now only just wide enough for the car to squeeze through. It was rocky indeed: On one side were rocks and brambles, which scratched the paintwork. The other side was a sheer drop into a steep forest.
By now at least part of my reason for pressing on was fear at the prospect of having to reverse up what was not much more than a donkey track. We certainly couldn't turn round.
At last we came to a bend to the right. The road petered out to a muddy track, next to a deserted church structure worthy of the Blair Witch Project. On our left, through the pelting rain we could see what looked like a half-finished house. It was inhabited, but only by a fierce guard dog.
At this point I had to stop, get out and see what became of the track that disappeared to the right behind the church. After passing over a small crumbling concrete platform about five feet wide propped on rusty struts over a precipice, I could just see that the track became a footpath: the sort that in happier times and better weather might have made for quite a pleasant walk downwards to the still-invisible lake.
As I walked back to the car I felt real fear. I could not see how we could get the car, a Passat Estate, back up the road we had come down. Even if we could turn round, the rain would make the rocks slippery. And there was no-one about to help.
I got in the car and gingerly tried to turn it around. Mercifully we'd stopped at the first and only place where a three-point turn was physically possible. Next we tried driving very slowly up the track, but as I'd feared the rocks got us when we tried to turn right. The front wheels spun noisily but helplessly and began to smoke, which scared the children more than anything so far.
Thinking of people escaping ruts in the desert, or in the snow, I had the idea of bringing out our picnic rug to get some traction, but it was no good. The rug just melted between the tyres and the rocks, and we were stuck.
At this point, as the time approached 5.00 pm with the threat of encroaching darkness, I reflected that even if we found a farm in the area they wouldn't have a tractor. Tractors make no sense in the mountains -- except perhaps as a paying service to drag tourists out of satnav traps of their own making.
We walked up the hill, and that was when our luck changed, and our story therefore became less interesting. We found three Swiss second-homers, a father, his son and his son's partner, working on the chalet next to the "No Access" sign. They gallantly offered to come down and give us a push, saying that we were the second group of people to come to grief down there. I was not optimistic that we could be saved merely by human muscle-power, but they did it. They got us over the hump and they and the rest of my family followed on foot as I gingerly retraced our tyre-tracks back up to safety.
James Kim and his family might well have had a similar experience to ours, right up until the point where we managed to find help. The difference was that they were in serious mountain conditions, in the snow and in winter. And there was clearly no human habitation for miles around.
By now satnav errors are a familar part of the minor news item landscape. We're all familiar with the routine: BMW driver (for some reason it tends to be BMW drivers) places more trust in his satnav than in his own eyes and ends up in the drink. Or in a sandpile. Or on a railway track.
If it is true that James Kim died as a result of a satnav error, it places a whole new perspective on what has tended to be an "...and finally" type of story. SatNav errors have become a matter of life and death.
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