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 ...
You have to remember to roll up the windows.
Most people wouldn’t be able to use a map either. The thing with a GPS is, as the ranger said, many people don’t know how to use it and probably this woman wasn’t even asking for the right destination and couldn’t figure out how to follow the voice guidance. Some people, further,ore, have no sense of direction.
I’ve used it in desert areas in New Mexico, but I had a good idea of where i was going and I would certainly never have strayed from the main roads. (Unless I could literally see my destination, usually a park headquarters, down that dirt road!)
not me. you get three addresses from your dispatcher and he wants you there an hour ago, the anxiety attack is strong in those situations if you dont know where they are and you have no GPS.
i drove pre GPS, lol by my memory was much much better, and i was young, so young (sigh)
sounds like you’ve had an interesting life. cool :)
What landmarks on a map can you reference in the middle of the desert?
bttt
One of the favorite arguments in favor of autonomous “self-driving” cars is that they rely on GPS for their navigation.
“I always print a Google map of the place I am going and use that along with the GPS. The GPS and I always get into disagreements about the route.”
Being an Army Brat, a Boy Scout and also a Vet, I learned very early what maps were all about. Before scouts, I learned to read maps while we were traveling from one base to another. That made mapping in scouts incredibly easy. I also learned how to use the sun and stars combined with the mapping skills. The Military applications only went to strengthen them.
GPS came along and I have never owned one of those little things you see on peoples dashboards. Being very computer literate, I have the Streets and Trips program on a small notebook that I keep in my truck that uses the USB GPS antenna for mostly location purposes in the program. As I can zoom in and out with ease, I can get to street level and also the big picture view. I still keep my lensatic compass in my computer case.
So, the best of both worlds. If I am looking for something in densely populated areas, I will use the Navigator in my cell phone for the voice directions so I can keep my eyes on the road.
i dont know lol. the person didn’t sound to bright.
too bad her child paid the price. must have been a terrible death.
Can you even still buy a good paper map? You certainly can’t as easily as you once could, I’m sure of that. I’ve still got a pile of legacy ones out in the garage.
I also learned to read roads.
You don’t have to be a tracker to tell a road hasn’t been traveled in however long it took for the tracks on it to be obliterated by weather or for that scrub to grow up in it.
In the desert, that takes even longer.
I have found my way in and out of places sans GPS, compass, and with an overcast sky simply by looking at a dirt/gravel road and determining which option was best and most recently traveled.
I wouldn’t care what the widget on the dashboard said, the trail tells me where people have been.
On a trip to Ireland several years ago, the wife and I strictly used maps to get around. We did great.
But we ran into a group of other Americans at a b and b who had no maps...they relied on GPS. They had to reset their GPS after it led them down goat paths, muddy dirt roads, and almost into a few rivers and lakes.
GPS is many times a good aid, but it's hardly perfect. We have it, but many times ignore it when it wants to take us down a weird route.
Our GPS has a few times led us into some very shady neighborhoods. Like MLK Drives in a few cities. I now peruse the map carefully depending on what city we're in.
There's reason to assume the person knew how to use a map.
There have been time in the wood when I could have sworn my Garmin was wrong. It never was. You can always trust a GPS to tell you exactly where you are. It’s the software the tells how to get from a to b that you can’t always trust.
There are exceptions...like my wife. She's an excellent map reader. She learned to read maps from her father when she was a little girl.
She's the navigator. And it works out perfectly. She hates to drive, and I get carsick if I have to read anything in a moving vehicle.
How about dead reckoning and knowing where the points of the compass are. A lost art
GPS is nice to have but only if you know where you’re going or at a minimum the general direction. Never rely on them.
I’ve used them a few times with “no avoidances” selected just for the hell of it and some of the roads, if you could call them that, have been real interesting. Thankfully I had 4WD.
I, for one, can’t wait for driverless cars so I won’t ever have to think again! /s
This is correct. GPS tells you your coordinates, with absolute accuracy. I carry extra batteries with mine. I have NEVER seen any case where a paper map was better than a GPS unit, unless the paper was needed for fire starting. A map tells you where things are, a GPS tells you where YOU are, and usually has an accurate map loaded in it as well. If someone was going into a truly remote and dangerous area, it might be a good idea to carry an extra handheld gps unit, incase of failure or damage, but those who rely on maps and compass would be advised to do that as well.
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