Women trust GPS, drive SUV into Mercer Slough [a marsh]

[Deepsepia]

best line "They said something about being in a jungle."


http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2011/06/15/2015326173.jpg

Three women from out of the country drove their car into Mercer Slough in Bellevue early Wednesday while trying to follow directions from their GPS.

The women, from Mexico, told police they had been following the device about midnight but obviously took a wrong turn.

The women went into the water with the rental car but were able to get out safely, said Carla Iafrate, spokeswoman for the Bellevue Police Department.

The three, who primarily speak Spanish and needed an interpreter to explain to police what happened, called 911 to say their car was floating, Iafrate said.

"They said something about being in a jungle."

The women, all in their 30s, were driving back to the Embassy Suites in Bellevue's Eastgate neighborhood when they went west on Interstate 90 instead of east. They made a turn off Bellevue Way and drove down a boat ramp right into the water, Iafrate said. "It's totally submerged," she said. "All you can see is the top rack on the car."

No one was injured, but the car, a Mercedes SUV, went far out into the slough. The water was so deep that a tow truck was unable to pull it out.

She said the women were in town for a Costco convention.

[Godfather]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIakZtDmMgo

[AntZ]

The Blaupunkt Navigation system in my old Audi was the biggest pain in the ass ever! There were times that it would try to lead us in circles or while going down the freeway, out of nowhere, it would tell us to "make a u-turn when possible". We would frequently need to reset it so it can get back on track.

[Arkady Renko]

I bet what they really set out to do was deposit a few packages of coke for their local distributor and they went a few yards too far when they followed the GPS coordinates for the dropoff spot.

[Teh One Who Knocks]

This happens more often than people think....I believe it was just last year or the year before that some couple got lost in the Oregon backcountry because they followed the instructions from their GPS system instead of using common sense.

[Deepsepia]

This happens more often than people think....I believe it was just last year or the year before that some couple got lost in the Oregon backcountry because they followed the instructions from their GPS system instead of using common sense.

That happens fairly frequently here . . . the problem is the GPS doesn't know about elevation, and in winter in the mountains, a road at 4500 feet may be a snowbank, not a road.



PORTLAND (AP) — In a holiday hurry, Jeramie Griffin piled his family into the car and asked his new GPS for the quickest way from his home in the Willamette Valley across the Cascade Range.

It said he could shave 40 minutes off the time of the roundabout route he usually takes to the in-laws' place.

Following the directions, he and his wife headed east on Christmas Eve and into the mountains, turning off a state highway onto local roads and finally getting stuck in the snow.

They had no cell phone service and ran short on formula for their 11-month-old daughter. After taking exploratory hikes, trying to dig out and spending the night in their car, the distraught couple filmed a goodbye video.

Like two other parties of holiday travelers who followed GPS directions smack into Oregon snowbanks, Griffin and family were eventually rescued. But their peril left law enforcement officers and travel advisers perplexed about drivers who occasionally set aside common sense when their GPS systems suggest a shortcut.

"Did everybody just get these for Christmas?" asked Klamath County Sheriff Tim Evinger, leader of one rescue effort.

In Griffin's case, in fact, the GPS device was a Christmas gift, from his parents. He used it for the first time to plan the trip to Central Oregon.

It's one he'd made many times before, following a route travelers have found reliable since at least the days of the Oregon Trail. But, he said, a shortcut the GPS device suggested was attractive.

"We were in such a hurry to get over there, we programmed it in the driveway and went ahead," he said.

In hindsight, he said, he should have double checked the route against a paper map — and packed extra formula for the baby. "We would be better prepared for the unknown," he said.

The AAA and the National Association for Search and Rescue say they don't sense a surge in trips that go amiss because of a blind reliance on GPS directions, but they hear about them from time to time.

"It's usually about every other month," said Christie Hyde of the national travel association AAA. It's a small number compared with the millions of GPS units in service, she said.

[Teh One Who Knocks]

That's the story I was thinking of :thumbsup:

See, I have no sympathy for people like that. Whatever happened to common sense? When the GPS tells you to turn onto a Forest Service road, maybe that's when you should say to yourself, "Gee, maybe we shouldn't go that way."

I've done plenty of backcountry traveling on Forest Service roads in the mountains and it's fairly obvious that the roads are not meant for every day kinda travel in the best of conditions, never mind in winter conditions.

[Deepsepia]

That's the story I was thinking of :thumbsup:

See, I have no sympathy for people like that. Whatever happened to common sense? When the GPS tells you to turn onto a Forest Service road, maybe that's when you should say to yourself, "Gee, maybe we shouldn't go that way."

I've done plenty of backcountry traveling on Forest Service roads in the mountains and it's fairly obvious that the roads are not meant for every day kinda travel in the best of conditions, never mind in winter conditions.

If you live where you live or where I do, you know that. Folks from other places don't necessarily know "if this road gains 1000 feet, it'll be snowing up there". There are some surprisingly good Forest Service roads, paved, that might look to someone like they're safe.

We have pretty strict laws that you have to carry chains November-April, but even so, a place like Klamath county can be really remote, you can get yourself into trouble. People think that because they're in their car, they're in this protected cocoon. Shit can still happen.

Here's another story from this winter (I kinda think this dude may have been suicidal). This is a guy who knew the area really well:

Sheriff: Stranded Oregon Man Kept Diary as He Starved, Froze to Death

PORTLAND, Oregon – When the body of Jerry William McDonald was discovered deep in the Oregon woods on a one-lane dirt road pockmarked with holes, the first hint of what led to his death was the Feb. 14 entry on his calendar: "Snowed in."

It was a Valentine's Day that went unmarked on his otherwise-detailed log, a reused calendar from the 1970s in which he had crossed out bygone dates and filled in the current year.

McDonald noted that he drove his blue 1997 GMC truck into the remote foothills of the Cascade Range on Feb. 7 and made camp, then woke up one day to find himself in the middle of a fast and heavy snowstorm.

If McDonald had been awake, said Linn County Sheriff Tim Mueller, he might have been able to see the flakes piling up, made plans to get out, deal with it.

McDonald's body was discovered Thursday by a U.S. Forest Service survey crew, about 60 miles east of the state capital of Salem. An autopsy conducted Friday showed he died of hypothermia and starvation, Mueller said.

McDonald, 68, liked to camp. While he didn't have a lot of food, he had gallon jugs of water, a jack for his truck and chains on his tires. Mueller said the Oregon man didn't have a compass, a cell phone or a GPS device, but he was resourceful: He knew enough to slip rocks under his wheels to give them traction.

He also knew the area. His log showed he spent time in the pretty coastal countryside that dots the Oregon shore, stopping in towns like Kitson, Oregon. He had plans to drive near Salem, and then on to the tiny community of Powers by April.

"This fellow looks like he's done this before, it looks like how he lived," Mueller said. "Sad deal."

The sheriff said McDonald didn't appear to have a permanent home, though his vehicle was registered in Unity, Oregon, some 250 miles from where his truck was found. No one had reported him missing.

Before he became stuck, McDonald had noted the mundane but necessary details needed to sustain a life free from any interference. On April 12, he had noted that his motor vehicle registration would expire.

He had plenty of cash: $5,000 was found with his body. But that didn't help him as the central Oregon winter storms kept dumping snow on the area, fast and hard and merciless, and the chains on his tires only left a series of holes in the ground that reflected his attempts to turn around the truck.

The Cascade Range separates the wilds of central Oregon from the state's polished and gleaming western valley. McDonald noted the snow just as he noted every change in the weather, and added, inexplicably, his location: On Horn Road, east of Salem, near Highway 22.

Sometimes, in his odd shorthand that left out just one or two letters, he would add other notes: "Dig o," for his attempts to dig out during the first three days of his ordeal.

About a month later, catastrophe struck. On March 16, he noted: "No Fo." He had run out of food, on the same day that six inches of snow also fell.

After that, he stopped writing about the food he didn't have. Survival experts say the body can go weeks without food, but only three or four days without water.

In the last month of his life, McDonald perhaps had some hope, thanks to the spring weather. "Warm," he wrote for three days in early April. But snow began falling again. Weather records from that time show storm after storm pushing up to the Cascades.

It would later surprise searchers that McDonald, just three miles (five kilometers) from the town of Marion Forks, made no attempt to get out and walk to town.

On April 15, he made one last entry -- "rain." He also noted that he had been in the area for 68 days.

Authorities say he left behind no special note. Perhaps he didn't know it was his last day.

[Hal-9000]

I bet what they really set out to do was deposit a few packages of coke for their local distributor and they went a few yards too far when they followed the GPS coordinates for the dropoff spot.


Why did I get the same sense that possibly something naughty was going on there :lol: