Frustration Rant !

[Music Lover]

This thread reminds me of the navigators in a rally car

 

[braumeister]

I've never called it "getting lost."
Rather, it's "exploring alternate routes."

 

[Bestwifeever]

I've never called it "getting lost."
Rather, it's "exploring alternate routes."

We call them "double-secret shortcuts to places we didn't realize we wanted to go."

 

[CardsFan]

We call them "double-secret shortcuts to places we didn't realize we wanted to go."

Been there, done that, but didn't get a tee shirt

 

[NW-Bound]

We use the generic term "GPS" to mean map routing software, of which there are many. Of course GPS is a piece of hardware that tells where we are on the earth (lat/long/alt), and has nothing to do with how to get us from point A to point B.

Of the map software, I think Google map is the best. Still, once it told me it did not know how to get me to where I wanted to go which was only a few miles away, yet I could look on the simple gridded street layout of that town that just two right turns would take me there. Weird software bug!

On my RV treks, I used MS Streets and Trips. It has been discontinued by MS, so the map no longer gets updated. Two years ago, I encountered some freeway sections that had been completely rerouted and rebuilt and did not match the map at all. Could have caused me some lost miles if I did not constantly make visual check against road signs.

And then, in New Brunswick, more than once, it told me to go down a country road that apparently had been abandoned, as evidenced by grass growing 3 ft high and completely covered the road. The routing software of course is only as good as its map database, which is outdated.

For the upcoming European road trip, I loaded Maps.Me, which has very high rating, on to my smartphone. It seemed to work well (don't really know until I get over there), but when told to route from Luxembourg City to Dusseldorf, it crashed! So, I told it to go through Cologne, and that worked. Darn software bug again.

 

[CardsFan]

It is amazing how accurate some free mapping software can be. A few years ago, on a business trip to Tunisia, my Belgian co-worker and I got a little lost just outside Sfax. We knew we were not far off the route, but were not sure which way to go. Call up Maps on the iPhone. located us, told us where to turn, and we probably only lost 10 minutes. FYI, it was a company phone. I have no idea what that mapping request might have cost!

 

[Texas Proud]

As to NW Bounds post....


Yes, the software can be buggy... they show a 'through street' just outside of my neighborhood.... but, it is in a field where cows graze and the land has a fence around it!!!


Another is sometimes they just do NOT have the street... we were going to a wedding last Friday and my newly updated maps on our GPS did not show the street where it was being held... Google maps has the street, but not the GPS... BIL said it is listed as a different name, but you can zoom in and hit the spot... but that is only good if you know where the spot is...


Just looked on Google and the street sign is not the name of the street on Google or what the wedding party put down...

 

[NW-Bound]

It took more than 6 or 7 years before Google map has the street address of my newly built 2nd home in the high country.

And Google Earth showed satellite photos as old as 20 years ago of the area, based on it not showing homes that had been there that long.

Then boom, one day Google map knew about my address. And some time later, Google Earth had a spanking new view of the area, and my home now showed up.

My 2nd home still has not shown up on Street View. I guess the Google survey car driver did not know there were more houses down that unpaved road, or he was afraid to drive too deep into the boondocks.

PS. It takes time for them to update any database. Even the county did not update my RE tax right away. I paid very low taxes for 2 years, but it turned out it was because it was only on the land. My joy was dashed when they finally updated their records, and the boondocks home has about the same RE tax as the city home, due to the valuation. Yet, there is no county service to speak of, like road maintenance. The snow plow stopped right at the corner of my lot.

PPS. One time we were up there, and my wife went out to yell at the road grader driver because he stopped right at my lot corner and turned around. In doing so, he chewed up the road in front of my entrance.

 

[Calico]

+2000

Besides, I don't need directions around here. I don't have any desire or need to go that far from home.

+3000

 

[Ronstar]

Sometimes I'll get a call where DW is traveling. She'll say something like "Do I turn left or right on such and such a road" and I'll say "well it sort of depends on which direction you're coming from." Silence. "Are you driving east or west?" Silence. "Where's the sun? ......

Amazing. DW and I used to have the same conversation before GPS nav systems came out. Used to be quite frustrating. But now that she's mastered the nav, I don't get direction assistance calls anymore.

 

[NW-Bound]

Yes, the software can be buggy... they show a 'through street' just outside of my neighborhood.... but, it is in a field where cows graze and the land has a fence around it!!!

Another is sometimes they just do NOT have the street... we were going to a wedding last Friday and my newly updated maps on our GPS did not show the street where it was being held... Google maps has the street, but not the GPS... BIL said it is listed as a different name, but you can zoom in and hit the spot... but that is only good if you know where the spot is...

Just looked on Google and the street sign is not the name of the street on Google or what the wedding party put down...

No map software maker is going to survey all the roads to update their database. The cost would be astronomical. They rely on county records, and that is often faulty. Examples follow.

My neighbors down the road from my high-country home complained to the county about no road maintenance, now that several nice homes had been built and high taxes levied based on the selling prices. They told me the county said their records showed that the road had been abandoned.

The county got wrong info on my city home. I did not know until I saw it on Zillow, which has my house all wrong. It says mine is a single-story while it is a two-story. It says I have 3-1/2 baths, but it is only 2-1/2 baths. The listed square-footage is less than the original size, and I have even enlarged it and applied for a permit. I think way back when the builder submitted the specs, the county clerk entered it wrongly into the records, and that's the way it stays.

 

[Philliefan33]

I have a pretty good sense of direction, but use GPS occasionally to alert me to when I'm getting close to a turn. Sometimes it's difficult to pay attention to traffic and monitor signs for cross streets at the same time. We have a stand-alone GPS unit but haven't used it in over a year. My go-to is the Waze app on my iPhone. It gives real-time alerts for traffic and road hazards.

 

[Amethyst]

Me too! It sounds like "...SIGH....OK, I see you were not paying attention, and now I have to start all over again."

"But I was paying attention! You're just confusing!" I feel like whining.

Oh, you are not imaging it. I hear it, too.

 

[Ronstar]

Most of navigation system providers originally used map data by Navteq. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navteq
Navteq used the US census bureau centerline files, (TIGER files) and tweaked them for navigation use. The files are database files with fields to include line segment from address right, to address right, street name, speed limit, etc.

The nav system takes the user's requested destination and searches the database for a match, then creates the best route to the destination. Since the database is latitude/longitude based, the nav system uses both the gps derived current location and the database info to create the route.

Unfortunately, the files contain some anomalies that point a nav system user in the wrong direction. These are usually from data in the original files.

A few years ago, our GPS directed us into Lake Michigan while driving to a Wisconsin light house. In this area, the road network is a series of forest roads and campground lanes, all of which are still part of the nav system database. I believe there is a means for reporting such problems, but I don't know how.

 

[NW-Bound]

Ah, someone here who knows about TIGER data. I just ran upstairs to look at the collection of engineering artifacts I could not bear to throw away, and among them is a set of CDs of TIGER 1995 data. Here's the story, and I will try to make it short.

One of the startups I helped founded had a software product that needed a geographical backdrop to present the engineering data that we collected. And for populated areas, a street map background is something everybody can identify with and is most natural.

The premier digital map company back then was ETAK. Their map was developed to do vehicle navigation, something everybody has now. And back then, GPS was not fully up, plus its accuracy was intentionally degraded by the DoD to limit the usefulness to the enemy (US military had access to the P/Y code, but that was and still is encrypted). So ETAK also put in hardware to supplement GPS, something that is no longer needed today, such as dead-reckoning, and software tricks such as keeping the computed vehicle present position from wandering off the road, etc...

We contacted them to get their licensed map, but the cost was in several hundred thousands. So, we had a programmer working with TIGER data. It took him a good part of a year to write software to parse the data and compile it into our own proprietary format.

I do not know where the US Census got their data, but the street map we built from it got some flaws. The streets were crooked, meaning straight streets did not look straight, but got a bit of zig-zag to them (poor resolution in lat/long coordinates or errors in digitizing?). Curved highways looked "kinky" due to being built up from straight line segments, and there were insufficient data points.

Well, it was still good enough for us, and we saved several hundred $K. And that was what we used.

ETAK massaged the data somehow to make it look better. They also claimed to process county records to get new streets/roads and to make correction. NAVTEK came on later. Both companies have been acquired and I don't know what they are doing now.

Anyway, the US Census released update of the TIGER data every so often, and we did one update to our own database. I could not find that second CD set.

Boy, it's been 20 years already.

 

[braumeister]

My all-time favorite:
This was back in 2005, and I was using a TomTom GPS in the car while driving from Ohio to Oregon.

I had pulled off the highway for some lunch in a town in Idaho. When I had eaten and was starting back to the highway it happened that the road I had come into town on was blocked by a fire truck.

It was clear that I just had to go around the block, but my GPS wanted me to "go east 820 miles, then make a U-turn."

Rebooting the thing fixed it.

 

[John Galt III]

A cupla things: A problem I think many folks have is figuring out what all those ambiguous, vague, signs really mean, while 95% of the drivers around you are flying around at maximum speed since they already know what the vague signs really mean. But you crawl along in the right lane hoping to have time to figure it all out, and then if you have to get in the far left lane for a turn, well, too bad, take an exit, make a U turn and try again! (Ya, I know, if I had a GPS, it would tell me to be in the left lane already) Plus.... Have you noticed that whenever you give up and pull into a gas station or convenience store to ask directions, the worker bees are never 'from around here' and don't know anything, but often a customer will know, who overhears your question, and pipes up with helpful info.

 

[Hermit]

It took more than 6 or 7 years before Google map has the street address of my newly built 2nd home in the high country.

And Google Earth showed satellite photos as old as 20 years ago of the area, based on it not showing homes that had been there that long.

Then boom, one day Google map knew about my address. And some time later, Google Earth had a spanking new view of the area, and my home now showed up.

My 2nd home still has not shown up on Street View. I guess the Google survey car driver did not know there were more houses down that unpaved road, or he was afraid to drive too deep into the boondocks.

PS. It takes time for them to update any database. Even the county did not update my RE tax right away. I paid very low taxes for 2 years, but it turned out it was because it was only on the land. My joy was dashed when they finally updated their records, and the boondocks home has about the same RE tax as the city home, due to the valuation. Yet, there is no county service to speak of, like road maintenance. The snow plow stopped right at the corner of my lot.

PPS. One time we were up there, and my wife went out to yell at the road grader driver because he stopped right at my lot corner and turned around. In doing so, he chewed up the road in front of my entrance.

Google Maps doesn't know where I live. Not even close. Well, about 20 miles away. They do have a nice photo of my new house!

 

[nvestysly]

I can honestly say that I've never felt even a moment's frustration while trying to give Frayne's DW directions.

I laughed out loud! That's funny!

 

[NW-Bound]

Google Maps doesn't know where I live. Not even close. Well, about 20 miles away. They do have a nice photo of my new house!

Hopefully, the police has a more current record of addresses in order to respond if you need to call 911.

As mentioned, Google did not know about my address for several years after the house was built. I forgot to check out my neighbor down the road, who got there a few years earlier. I saw UPS and FedEx going down to his home all the time, as they had been full-timers and bought most things off the Internet. UPS and FedEx may be more up-to-date than Google because it directly impacts their commerce.

More than once, I gave specific instructions to visitors with an email, and told them that they would not find me otherwise with Google map. It was to no avail. They only stored my address in their phone, and expected to find me with their GPS or smartphone. They got lost, and I had to talk them how to get here.

So, I learned this. Some people are lazy to read, or they simply cannot follow instructions.

 

[GalaxyBoy]

I feel your frustration. DW (and I love her to death!) simply can't read a map. On a trip I once asked her how far to the next exit and was told, "about half an inch." She is annoyed by the GPS because it interrupts her. I usually get directions as, "you should have turned back there."

I better hope she never reads this post.

 

[Walt34]

I usually get directions as, "you should have turned back there."

I think I married her sister, or at least a cousin. Same thing.

 

[Ronstar]

I had frustration from 2 sides while traveling in Ireland. I wanted to take the ferry across the River Shannon while going from Killarney to the Cliffs of Moher. It would save hours compared to an all road route. But the Garmin wouldn't give me the ferry as an option. Probably because the ferry route wasn't part of the road file, and ferry route time would be dependent on one's arrival time at the ferry compared to the crossing schedule.

Our rental car agreement was firm in that the car must not leave Ireland roads. DW panicked, thinking the GPS would somehow notify authorities once we left the road while crossing the Shannon on the ferry. She called the rental car company to make sure it was ok before allowing me to take the ferry.

 

[GalaxyBoy]

I feel your frustration. DW (and I love her to death!) simply can't read a map.

Let me clarify! She's a very smart person, having passed the bar exam in multiple states. It's just that her skill set doesn't include map reading.

 

[dixonge]

Then a dear friend's brain works differently from mine. If you give her right/left directions she holds her hands up to see which one makes an "L". That habit is difficult to watch while she was driving.

My wife used to automatically touch her wedding ring to check for left. I still get a kick out of watching the wheels turn in her head as she processes things to come up with the correct direction. I actually *hope* for her to turn the wrong way, so I get to use the "No, the *other* left!" line. hahaha Still cracks me up even after 26 years.

We don't wear wedding rings any more, but I think she has a muscle memory recognition of which finger it used to be on. Something like that. I actually researched this one time and was a bit surprised to discover that there are a lot of people with this issue.

Here's what I have always suspected: Right/left confusion is more common among left-handers, like me; more common among us women; and often accompanied by weak map-reading skills and a wobbly sense of geography.

If you can't tell your left from your right, you're not stupid - Houston Chronicle

Me, I just always know where I am and can visualize an area as if I am looking at it on a map from overhead.