With how often they get lost on Austrian mountains I'm shocked they survived in fucking Australia
this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2024
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Google maps killed people last year. It used to be that if you navigated to a pin based on lat lon it would geocode the location. Often, in the wilderness this would get geocoded to the center of a very large school district. This led me to being a hundred miles off on one occasion in the Gila wilderness without realizing I had missed where I really intended to go. I am sure this happened to the couple in Nevada that got lost, then got stuck, then got lost and stuck again.
if you navigated to a pin based on lat lon it would genocide the location.
Well, that does sound like it would lead to a lot of deaths.
Google is more evil than we realised!
Hahaha. Even autocorrect knows.
I don't know why people are down voting you. You are speaking the truth. I learned the hard way in Oregon and in the deserts of New Mexico that if I must use Google for GPS, use it on satellite view and that's how you can get accurate locations on your pins. But it only works on satellite view.
Otherwise, no joke, Google will navigate you to the middle of a school district, absolutely nowhere near the pinned destination. It's disorienting and terrifying especially when alone and confused. Like I know I dropped that pin last time I was there but I don't know how to get back! I'm lost!
I think people are downvoting him because Maps didn't kill people, fuckin stupidity did
If following Google maps is an indication of "fuckin stupidity," then there are millions of fuckin stupid people driving around 24/7/365 who will never be in the news because nothing bad happened because Google maps is mostly accurate. But when it's not accurate, believe me I've experienced it, things get scary.
It is stupid when you depend on it during a wildlife trek
When you are in unfamiliar territory do you use Google maps to get directions?
Have you ever gotten off the interstate or been outside of a city? This wasn't a rare behavior that only occurred on a "wildlife trek"(whatever that is)
If I miss an exit and end up in a barren waste land instead of somewhere inside a city because of google maps my first instinct would be to turn off google maps and make a U-turn. No continue to drive past civilization.
Yes we understand but the scenario we're talking about is when people are literally navigating already out in the middle of nowhere. GPS navigation gets sketchy out there. Sometimes reliable but not always.
If you're travelling into the wilderness like OP says, and not using a proper paid GPS, you're an idiot, let's be honest here
Don't event need to pay, you can use osmand
You might test it again. I think they might not geocode every location anymore. It used to be that you didn't enter a latitude and longitude and you could get directions pretty close to that location but then going out of Google maps and coming back in would send you to the geocoded location (center of school district)rather than the original lat lon.
Blindly following google maps without double checking and understanding how it works is indeed fuckin stupid. Software will always have bugs and glitches and people need to learn to work with that
Windows taught the ignorant that software will always have bugs and you shouldn't rely on it. Most software doesn't have bugs. Your antilock brakes work. Your cruise control doesn't have bugs. Flight control computers in airliners dont have acceptable bugs and glitches. All you are doing is victim blaming.
if you navigated to a pin based on lat lon it would genocide the location.
I don't know why people are down voting you. You are speaking the truth.
I think the horrors of Google's genocides are well documented on Wikipedia. I don't know why anyone doubts this anymore.