By Gail Marsh
It didn’t make the national news or even the state news, but local folks are still buzzing about a neighbor’s GPS misadventure. As you read about this GPS failure, think about how you’ll answer our poll: Has your GPS ever misled you?
The story
Newbies at RVing, Tom and Doris planned a shakedown trip to Illinois. They followed their trusted GPS (Google Maps) from mid-Missouri to St. Louis. It was a three-hour drive and both newbies finally felt relaxed while driving their new, 40-foot motorhome. Perhaps too relaxed.
Somehow the couple missed an exit. GPS advised them to make a U-turn at the earliest opportunity. Since U-turning a 40-foot diesel pusher on a city street was out of the question, the newbies decided to simply go around the block to reverse course.
That’s when the couple discovered that many of St. Louis’ city streets run one way. Tamping down panic, Doris suggested they keep going and see how GPS redirects their route. That’s when the real “fun” began!
Truth or embellishment?
I’m not fully convinced that the remainder of the story is the actual truth or whether it has been embellished with each retelling. In any case, the couple ended up driving on the cobblestones near the Gateway Arch. They hit the brakes (thankfully) before driving their brand-new 40-foot motorhome into the Mississippi River.
Not alone
Tom and Doris are hardly alone. Countless folks have been misguided by GPS. (We once ended up driving on a bicycle path in downtown St. Louis, in search of The Old Spaghetti Factory!)
Sadly, not all GPS mishaps end with a funny story. People have died because they trusted and dutifully followed their GPS. You can read about some of these tragic events here.
How about you?
Has your GPS ever misled you? Vote in our poll and then consider commenting on these additional questions: What GPS system do you use, if any? If your GPS misled you, what would you do?
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RVT1226
It has tried to several times, but I have always caught the mistake before I acted on it.
Garmin for RVs has misled us multiple times:
1) Once we were 5 minutes from camp, not realizing it, it led us around for half an hour before we realized it didn’t know where we were going. We stopped, it took us a few minutes to get ourselves pointed in the right direction. Costing us about 45 minutes.
2) Two years in a row, on our way down to FL, it drove us right past our exit, to the next one, and back. No big deal if weren’t I-95 with backed-up traffic.
3) Misc. small, incidental reroutes.
Garmin says they rely on users to report discrepancies! We’ve learned to always update our GPS before leaving. If you find discrepancies, take notes, call it in!
Class A, towing our car.
One of our favorite roads does not show up on our Garmin. It thinks we are off in a farmer’s field, instead of the 4 lane divided highway.
Been there. Highway departments all use GIS (geographic information systems) these days. There is a process for getting road change information to a central location. Some departments are exception doing updates. And well, there are others…
On one trip, it wanted us to take multiple left turns causing us to go in a square. There was also the time (in our car) my hubby used our old and outdated Garmin. He still complains about that trip and the terrible directions.
Going to a new pet groomer. The proper location was about 3 miles east of the town, and the GPS put me at the same property number, about 3 miles west of the town. The mapping software was not aware that property numbers were centered on the town and increased in each direction from that center.
I was cussing my GPS for leading me on a rat run through a maze of residential streets when I should have been able to just drive straight through. When we were returned to the road I thought we should have been on all along, I looked back to see workers were putting up ‘road closed’ gates and detour signs due to a culvert failure.
So a few failures and a few big saves.
It appears to have issues with round abouts. It’s like they have never heard of trailer offside tracking. I also don’t understand the fascination cities have with them, Europeans don’t even like them!
I love TomTom. They have the best tools for creating highly customized routing and uploading it to a GPS unit. However, sadly, TomTom (Swiss company) has stopped selling any new physical hardware within the United States (gee, wonder why). Unless you already have a unit, it is difficult to get one. TomTom still has strong support for the units already in the United States. If you don’t have a standalone unit (or one built into the car), the only way to get TomTom’s services is via a subscription and using your smartphone with an app in place of a stand alone unit.
If you rely solely on a GPS and have no real idea of where you’re going, you deserve to be mislead…incoming…
We almost always use Waze. The crowdsourced app has never led us astray. Whenever we’ve questioned it and kept going on a predetermined (by us) route we have always regretted it. Now, the caveat is that it is much more accurate and useful when you are in a more populated area. But even in less populated areas the data it collects from previous drivers who have passed through helps keep it quite accurate. Now that it will also work “offline” when we have no mobile signal is also very helpful.
Garmin RV has been wrong on many occasions. Even to 50 year old RV parks and other businesses. If Garmin wants me to “call it in” (which I doubt would change anything) and help them build their device they should give them away.
i had a “Magellan” it was more accurate than the Garmin, Garmin bought them out.
Eliminating competition means not needing to improve your product.
Heading down the road, cross over a bridge, turn right and 1/4 mile later GPS says “turn right and navigate off road”, showing a dotted line crossing the river to our destination.
Funny.
Yes, once and a minor event. I’d like to see another poll. I wonder how many have updated their gps. We have a ’14 Expedition that’s never been. I also have an ’09 Garmin that’s never been also. It seems about 95% of the places we go were still there before our units were made. I’m curious. I’d bet most people just get new units every few years.
After the first time this happened to me (15 years ago) I now review the proposed route on Google earth to make sure it doesn’t take me somewhere I don’t want to go.
We have never used a gps for navigation while driving. We have used it to find an address, then we pick our own route.
When my gps is correct, and we do get where we are going, she expects high fives. When she is wrong, she doesn’t admit it.
That’s why I verify my driving route on a paper map / atlas. We were going to a winery in So. Illinois from Cape Girardeau and MapQuest insisted that we turn onto a gravel road miles from our intended place of arrival. Any trip I track on paper and by Google Maps for any deviations.
Using Google Maps to get to my cousins land in the mountains outside of Livingston MT. Google maps put us on a Lane instead of the road by the same name. Fortunately we did not have the trailer. My car ended up with a scratch down the whole side until we found a place to turn around. The next day returning to the land and knowing the correct route as we turned onto the correct road Google flashed to the LANE, ROAD, back to lane, road several time on my screen. My cousin had asked if we were bringing the trailer! It would have been destroyed on the wrong road and beat to crap on the correct RD.
We were also using a high detail paper map…it only showed the Lane! What a mess!
Ocassionaly misled by both Garman and Google. We used to have Rand McNally RV GPS and really liked it better, but it is not supported for RVs anymore, just truckers.
Going across Kansas, headed to a small-town Harvest Host, Garman took us off the interstate about ten miles early onto “Old US 40.” It seemed like a reasonable shortcut and maybe more scenic, but it turned out the pavement had deteriorated so much that it had been “improved” with a layer of (very dusty) gravel. Our white coach and blue car were both tan by the time we arrived. That one is more funny than dangerous, but both have happened.
I answered “no” because we don’t depend on a GPS in the vehicle for route-finding. We use both online and hard copy maps to plan trips. If unexpected issues arise, we will refer to the atlas, and sometimes, to maps on apps on my phone. Our truck, which is the tow vehicle for the TT, doesn’t have navigation on the info screen. Our other vehicle does, I’ve played with it to see how it works, since I ride with a friend around town who does use her navigation.
GPS is a satellite signal, it is the map system that uses that signal that is the issue. So the map system is at fault. I have used GPS systems since the 1990’s when it was just a signal and all you received was position and altitude and overlayed on a paper map. the paper maps had issues back then. I have been on 4 wheel drive roads which were drawn as drivable roads on the maps. I have been on 4 wheel drive roads which on the maps were drawn as 4 wheel roads but ended up as a barely visible track. Maps were updated over the years by people in offices using satellite pictures to determine the road conditions.
I have over the years sent updates to the mapper about how bad the roads are and some have been updated, some have not been. So whichever software system you use, it is based on different map systems that hopefully has been updated by reliable people.
GPS sort of makes me wonder about my property lines! For as long as I can remember – the N-S runway at Hector Intn’l Airport in Fargo ND the heading numbers to center-line of the runway were 17 and 35 (170 deg’s and 350 deg’s). Since GPS and some earth tracking changes they are now 18 and 36! (180 – 360 deg’s.) Older GPS units may also be offset by the later technology (?). Surveyors often use GPS for measuring property lines……….!
Yes it has, but we didn’t believe it long enough to cause serious trouble, going from Mount Rushmore to the wind caves. Called wind cave to get directions and they said turn it off and just drive south. It is worthless here. Then it took us through some neighborhood on the way to the Woolley mammoth site. Can’t get stupider than gps unless it is the typing corrector of my iPhone.
We use the maps feature on our phone sparingly. I usually look up our destination before we embark. In the past I’ve used paper maps but found out that just about all map companies put deliberate mistakes in order to be sure the competition hasn’t copied their maps. I did take one road one time thinking it would be a shortcut but realized too late it had lots of low hanging trees. We were lucky.
Our problems have occurred when we lost signal for a period and regained it, only to have GPS reprogram an RV acceptable route to something dangerous. This happened to us in Vermont and Colorado. Both times, we caught it in time and were able to find a safe alternative. We ALWAYS carry good paper maps, just in case. In our early days using GPS, it led us on several wild goose chases in the car. GPS is no substitute for educating yourself on how you will get from point A to point B.
I pre-program my GPS with MapSource or Basecamp. If I need to change the route, I usually use Waze.
No, because I’ve never used a GPS. If my latest car, a 2022 Ford Escape, has one, I don’t know how to find it. I don’t think it has one. None of my older vehicles had a GPS. The truck I pull my trailer with, a 2009 Ford F-150, does not
When it comes to driving our motorhome I use Googlemaps earth view. I’ll let the app take a first pass at routing, but then I review the route and make changes I feel are better for us. If our route takes us through metro areas I pre-review areas around exits/road changes to see what I need to do if I miss a turn.
When in our toad we usually just go with one of the various recommendations the app comes up with. Usually works pretty well although I have cursed “Lola” from time to time. 😁
We had my father-in-law transported from Illinois to Florida in a Class A outfitted for medical transport, with 2 drivers and a nurse onboard. We got a 1:00 am call in Florida as the transport found itself on a narrow dead-end road looking for the nursing facility. We verified addresses that had been given, which were correct, but the driver had entered Peoria, rather than East Peoria, two different cities on opposite sides of the river. They had to back up in the dark, in the rain for a mile and a half in order to get back on track. They were quite late for both pick-up and delivery, but my father-in-law had a great time with a cute nurse. Make sure you punch in the entire address.
Thank you for the question, RV Travel! We have been dissatisfied with GPS directions on occasion, but the only time that it was extremely annoying was when it sent us to a locked and dissused entrance to the Cummins of Chattanooga. We executed a 10-12-point turn on a city street in order to get to the actual entrance to their lot. Have a great week and safe travels!
It’d be great to hear from readers what is the best GPS for RVing in their opinion. IMO, Garmin RV 890 has everything I need and more. It led us around the US across 25+ states without a single misdirection.
We use RV Life trip wizard and GPS app. And I always compare routes against other GPS apps like Google and iPhone. (Only google had the correct location for the Stony Fork VA site we are currently at) I make sure to read the campground reviews in RV Life as many times there is heads up info on routes in to the campground. It takes some effort but well worth it.
Miss Garmin put me on a dead end street with no room to turn my fifh wheel around. Called police and they stopped traffic while i backed up about 2_blocks in to heavy traffic. Not the only time she led me astray but certainly the most memorable
It happened once. Once was enough being white knuckles and not sure I could get out of the too big RV and street we should not be on. I immediately bought a Garmin RV GPS unit. It died and bought Garmin Trucker GPS because it was same thing but cheaper. No more misleading directions happening.