Trust Your Eyes… Not Your Map
It happens in Minnesota. It happens in the maze-like city blocks of Manhattan. It happens in the deserts of Southern California, and the frozen wastes of Russia, and the mountains of Colorado. It happens everywhere, because we use it everywhere… perhaps, more than we should. I’m talking about instances where your GPS leads you astray. Sometimes by taking you up a road that no longer exists, sometimes by thinking you’re on the freeway instead of the city streets, and sometimes by sending you into the middle of nowhere. At best, these incidents are inconvenient. At their worst, they cause “death by GPS.” There is a common misconception that these issues are completely due to user error. Occasionally, people point to the responsibility of the map-maker—these days, that’s usually Google. But rarely is it acknowledged that these incidents are a part of a wider group of human error that, while natural, should be monitored and corrected! Here, we delve into human-GPS error not in the context of specific stories, but as a wider phenomenon. We’ll explore the various kinds of human-GPS errors that are most common, and explain why they occur. Finally, we’ll make an argument for why and how to…