My GPS sent me down a closed mountain road in Asheville

Last month I was heading to a cabin rental outside Asheville and my phone's nav took me onto this gravel road that got narrower and steeper every mile. I passed a faded sign that said "local traffic only" but I figured it was a shortcut, until I hit a dead end with a washed out bridge about 2 miles in. I had to back down the whole thing in the dark with my hazards on, took almost 30 minutes and scraped my bumper on a rock. Now I always cross-check any rural route on a paper map before I trust the app. Has anyone else had a navigation fail that cost them real time or money?

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david_jones3818d ago

It's not just maps, man. The whole world runs on this illusion that software knows better than what's right in front of you. I watched a coworker drive his truck into a flooded underpass because the app said it was clear, and he trusted the blue line over the water covering the road. Same thing with my buddy who followed GPS to a "restaurant" that had been closed for two years, just because the review was still up. We've stopped using our eyes and common sense, handed all that over to a screen. Your paper map trick is smart, but the real fix is learning to look up from the phone and just go, "does this actually make sense?