A friend sent me some goodies earlier today using a local delivery service.
First, she rang me up to warn me to expect the parcel and then I got a text message from the delivery partner as he is called over here, advising me that he would be reaching me within 22 minutes. I wondered how he could have calculated that timing since he wouldn’t know the traffic conditions when he started but, let it pass.
Thirty five minutes later, I got a call from him asking me for directions. He was just 200 Mts away from my home and I gave him directions and landmarks to follow.
It took another fifteen minutes and three more telephone calls for that smart fellow to finally reach me.
When I asked him why there was confusion, he pointed his smartphone to me and said that the google location kept showing him wrong directions. The same app had given me the driving time at the time of starting his journey!
Like me, don’t you wonder, why these applications are called smart when all that was needed for that gent was to follow the directions that I, obviously smarter than the app, had given him?
We’ve had our share of GPS adventures.
There is usually no need to use GPS to find our way home. With a new car and trying to learn all its “bell & whistles,” we tried using GPS to route our way home only to find, as we were getting close to home, that it was telling us we had several more miles to go. We live on a state highway a few miles east out of a small town and the GPS was trying to send us to the equivalent address on the highway several miles to the WEST of that small town. I fixed that issue in the GPS.
Mike recently posted..Groundsel bush
By and large, GPS seems to work but, some times, either due to wrong entering of the address or some other quirk such mishaps take place. I have had others finding my place without any problems.
My GPS has misdirected me on a few occasions. However, on many other trips it has helped me tremendously!
That is by and large the reports from others too.
Guiding delivery guys to my place in Bangalore is a nightmare…as you said they would have arrived at the end of the street and needing just a 5 minute get lost in that stretch. A couple of calls later, a few more directions and my complex security guards standing outside the gate to net them like goalies the delivery is finally accomplished 😀
Perhaps it is only us siblings who are fated to face such morons in our lives.
I’ve noticed a couple of times, where delivery people have gotten into a nearby street that is actually just below our back yard – and probably if the housing estate had included a ROW up from it, we’d be in that street. Rather we are one street up and down a quite long ROW … I was watching (on the Google map app) where the supermarket truck was the other day, 1 minute apparently and then noticed he was in said wrong street! Of course it was another 5 minutes before he appeared…
Last weekend, on our way back from Ranui, H took possibly a wrong turn, and we ended up someplace else. She pulled over and hit up her app and we soon found our way back to New Lynn…of course, she hadn’t been using the app to get home. She said I think at that funny junction I wasn’t supposed to take the first exit!
Catherine de Seton recently posted..Crazy week – begone!
Catherine, By and large, GPS seems to work but, some times, either due to wrong entering of the address or some other quirk such mishaps take place. I have had others finding my place without any problems.
All right!!
Now, my Not So Humble (semi-expert) Opinion. I can see why these things are happening, I should really write a blog regarding this topic, but I’ll try a brief explication.
First, the issue usually will not be with, as slightly carelessly refered, to as GPS. GSP is just the module which is locating a person (actually the device being carried, lost or dropped) to geographical co-ordinates. This is very reliable technology (actually for civilian use these are supposed to be slightly off the real co-ordinates, but only slightly).
Secondly, the trouble starts when the google App (or Apple, BTW Apple had massively scrambled their mapping software, breaking and mixing eggs, shells) maps these co-ordinates on to a map. This is where errors occur, due to the limitations of formats, unreliable data and the fact that it is humanely impossible to have all of this verified by, well humans. Now coming to humans, let me enlighten all humans reading this. This is the age of AI (Artificial Intelligence) and HS (human stupidity) and HS is winning most of the time. Now many will respond with “What are you on about, we are just making the point that I am smarter than the App”. Maybe, indeed quite possibly, dear re
ader. However please remember the delivery bloke is also a human. One of my friends (such are some of them) is very tech savvy and equally geographically challenged, I saw him go execute three left turns, failing to understand that he is head back to where he started! What I have noted is that more and more people cannot read maps; cannot relate what is there on the device with their actual surroundings, so often blindly follow instructions valid and erroneous. I think Asians lead the way, Indians are beaten by the Japanese: https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/03/gps-tracking-disaster-japanese-tourists-drive-straight-into-the-pacific
The devices with software are addling our brains.
Thank you Srinivas for that tutorial. I shall remember the next time and not get all worked up.