How many times has your GPS navigation been wrong?

I’ve never known my GPS to be wrong. Granted, I rarely have to use it. I know my way around and I’m pretty old fashioned with mapquest and writing the streets down. I don’t rely on technology like that. Why? because if my gps breaks, fails, battery dies (gps is on my iphone), etc.. then I am out of luck without one hint of where to go. Old fashion works for me.

I’ve never had it wrong so it fooled me. There have been times it didn’t work, but it was obvious. Plus I only use GPS as a back up, never as my primary means of navigation. I also don’t rely on technology. I’m a firm believer in knowing how to use a map and compass.

The GPS system is often wrong, sometimes by as much as a few hundred yards, but usually just a few. It most often happens some time after it has been powered up, when the almanac data (which is loaded when the first fix is made with satellites, and provides the local GPS system with information about where the nearest satellites are and will be) is getting old. It can also be fooled by the physical environment around the vehicle – driving in urban canyons, between large buildings, the signal from the satellites can be deflected off the surroundings, which have a small but significant impact on the timings that the GPS system uses to determine position. Thick vegetation can also play a deleterious role.

A good sat-nav system, however, will smooth out such ‘jitter’ as it presumes that the vehicle is on a road, following the route programmed into it. You can see this by deviating from the route – for the first few yards off the set route it will show your position to be where you should be, rather than where you are, as it presumes jitter is occurring until the deviation is such that it assumes you’re no longer following the route.

Many times. My house is not in the right place many people have told me, it takes them a few blocks away. My husband and I still rely on paper maps more than GPS.

When friends come to our new place up North, we have to tell them not to trust the GPS. It will tell them they have nearly a mile to go while they are passing our house.

On several occasions my GPS has taken me off the path to my destination. One time in Atlanta when I was trying to get to the airport, it kept taking me in circles and nowhere near the airport. I missed my plane that time. When I was in Las Vegas, I programmed in an address for a shoe store that I copied from the phone book and was 7 miles away. After heading in what seemed the right direction, all of a sudden I was on this strange highway and the GPS said to drive 620 miles to destination. That was freaky, so I just turned around.
Even after some other mishaps, I will not leave home without my GPS. I’m one of those directionally challenged persons.:P

There is one spot in Ohio where the GPS voice tells me to go right, but the map shows to go left. I always seem to listen to the voice, and I’m always wrong.

The only time either of mine are wrong is when the maps are of out of date (which is fairly frequent since there’s a lot of road work and subdivisions being built). So, chances of wrong in old, established parts? Nil.

Never… Wait, I do not use a GPS.

Google Maps is often more useful because of the tools you have on a computer that most GPS devices aren’t capable of handling, such as the street view feature or click-&-drag route changes.

So far, mine has only been wrong once and that had to do with not knowing that Seattle likes to place curbs on the yellow lines every so often to keep people from using side streets as detours and thus funnel all traffic to the main drags.

However, I never personally owned a Garmin, and after my buddy’s Garmin told him to take a left turn through a Jersey Barrier, across three lanes of busy highway, and drop about 15–20 feet off the edge of the overpass to get to a certain cross-street, I doubt I will. (In the same area, mine told me to take a right a block further down, followed by two more rights to go underneath without the crashing)