10 replies to this topic

[frax]

Saw this in the paper the other day - a middle aged Swedish couple type 'Capri' (the famed Italian Island) wrong, and ended up in Northern Italy, in the industrial town of Carpi instead (which is not an island!).

The full (short story) as reported in various places world wide:
Google News links

(in case the above link doesn't work, try this one: Roman Forum blog)

[Hans van der Maarel]

Quite interesting that most of the article titles seem to imply it was the GPS (actually, their satellite navigation device) that caused the error, while in reality it worked just fine and sent them exactly to the location they had entered... It's not bad satnav, it's dumb people...

[Jimbo]

That depends on what the mapserver application, if they are using Google Maps then it's believable since I see errors like that all the time.

[DaveB]

Many of the articles say the couple typed in Carpi. It was their error. Is the satnav supposed to "correct" people who type in a real place?

[frax]

Very similar story in the paper today, but not as bad - a guy navigated to the wrong place when heading for the town of Slite on the island of Gotland (in the Baltic Sea, popular summer/tourist destination), he typed in Silte in his car and ended up on the other end of the island...

[Derek Tonn]

I borrowed a friend's truck last Winter to go up to Minneapolis, and I particularly enjoyed the 10+ minutes of his TomTom blinking and buzzing at me because I was apparently driving "off roads" through fields, streams, etc. Never mind that I was driving on a four-lane highway that had opened well over one year earlier...less than half an hour from the 14th largest metro in the United States.

[frax]

More GPS gaffe stories at BBC: http://news.bbc.co.u...int/8174216.stm

[Casey Greene]

I like to call these kind of mishaps 'GPScapades'

[DaveB]

I'm sure there are some of those stories that are due to limitations of satnav (data that is out of date, changing road conditions, etc.) or actual errors in the data or the route-finding algorithms. Others are "user error". What strikes me the most though is how long it takes for some people to figure out they went the wrong way or to a different destination. More understandable when you're farther from home in unfamiliar territory. Maybe it would've helped if they had a cartographer with them! (or not, knowing my own lack of sense of direction!) ha ha

[MapMedia]

If only the GPS had been made by Google, it would have said, "Do you mean Capri instead?"

[Nick H]

...Maybe it would've helped if they had a cartographer with them! (or not, knowing my own lack of sense of direction!) ha ha

Thank goodness, someone else who has to turn the map round to point it in the right direction . To me, this story shows all the signs of having been made up by a follower of the journalistic persuasion. An unnamed "Swedish couple"? Attributed to "an Italian official" or alternatively a "spokesman for Carpi town-hall"?

Nicodemus's forecast for 2010: On a slow news-day reports will be received of a Norwegian couple who wishing to drive to Carpi arrived in Capri, as a result of entering the wrong name in their GPS receiver.

Regards, N.