German tourists lost for more than a week after Google Maps mishap

https://lemmy.ml/post/12314826

German tourists lost for more than a week after Google Maps mishap - Lemmy

With how often they get lost on Austrian mountains I’m shocked they survived in fucking Australia
It always makes me a little uncomfortable when people use “fucking” as an adjective, immediately followed by a noun, YKWIM?
That’s your fucking problem
There are far worse examples of Germans getting lost.
The Hunt for the Death Valley Germans

This is the tale of what for me was a rather remarkable adventure.  It was assembled on the basis of my personal recollection and experience, emails, GPS logs and some official documents.  It represents solely the perspective and opinions of myself, in my more lucid moments.  It is in no way intended to represent th

Should’ve used Waze
Waze is owned by Google and is based heavily on Google maps now
Yes, but I find the maps still get updated faster on Waze than Google, and volunteers are much more responsive to fixing errors

Hey, you know when people say they prefer Edge or Brave over Chrome?

That’s you

You people do know osm exists right? Just use something like organicmaps then you have navigation and routing even without cell network.
Google maps also allows map downloads for when you are offline.
I heard that before but google maps just has vastly inferior map data. Especially if you go outside to touch some grass. Google maps + hiking is an instant combo for getting lost.

I have offline maps downloaded, but I once had it fail to navigate when I had no phone signal.

I just tested it now in airplane mode, and I get

Can’t reach the internet Check your connection and try again

So I’m glad that I also have OSMand installed.

(Yes, I was trying to navigate within the field area).

Can you search residential addresses in organic maps? I had to use some shitty address to coordinate converter before.
Yeah it does, just tried it. The search is not forgiving in terms of typos tho. They also recently started supporting android auto(dont have a car so cant review) and it keeps getting great updates in general.
Cool thanks for checking. I mainly bike now and junked my car so I couldn’t comment on Android auto either. The one I borrow has the stock head unit.
This is probably supported by google maps, but one thing i really love is being able to select intermediate stops when plotting a route. Really useful for longer trips. You can also import .gpx track files if you wanna follow a route you saw somewhere.
Also check Osmand from F-droid. It uses the same openstreetmap but has more functionality.
All that would have changed would be the headline
Waze went to shit after Google bought it. I had to stop using it because Waze started changing my destination mid-route without warning.
Google maps killed people last year. It used to be that if you navigated to a pin based on lat lon it would genocide the location. Often, in the wilderness this would get geocoded to the center of a very large school district. This led me to being a hundred miles off on one occasion in the Gila wilderness without realizing I had missed where I really intended to go. I am sure this happened to the couple in Nevada that got lost, then got stuck, then got lost and stuck again.

I don’t know why people are down voting you. You are speaking the truth. I learned the hard way in Oregon and in the deserts of New Mexico that if I must use Google for GPS, use it on satellite view and that’s how you can get accurate locations on your pins. But it only works on satellite view.

Otherwise, no joke, Google will navigate you to the middle of a school district, absolutely nowhere near the pinned destination.

I think people are downvoting him because Maps didn’t kill people, fuckin stupidity did
If following Google maps is an indication of “fuckin stupidity,” then there are millions of fuckin stupid people driving around 24/7/365 who will never be in the news because nothing bad happened because Google maps is mostly accurate. But when it’s not accurate, believe me I’ve experienced it, things get scary.
If you’re travelling into the wilderness like OP says, and not using a proper paid GPS, you’re an idiot, let’s be honest here
Don’t event need to pay, you can use osmand
It is stupid when you depend on it during a wildlife trek

When you are in unfamiliar territory do you use Google maps to get directions?

Have you ever gotten off the interstate or been outside of a city? This wasn’t a rare behavior that only occurred on a “wildlife trek”(whatever that is)

If I miss an exit and end up in a barren waste land instead of somewhere inside a city because of google maps my first instinct would be to turn off google maps and make a U-turn. No continue to drive past civilization.
Yes we understand but the scenario we’re talking about is when people are literally navigating already out in the middle of nowhere. GPS navigation gets sketchy out there. Sometimes reliable but not always.
Blindly following google maps without double checking and understanding how it works is indeed fuckin stupid. Software will always have bugs and glitches and people need to learn to work with that
Windows taught the ignorant that software will always have bugs and you shouldn’t rely on it. Most software doesn’t have bugs. Your antilock brakes work. Your cruise control doesn’t have bugs. Flight control computers in airliners dont have acceptable bugs and glitches.
You might test it again. I think they might not geocode every location anymore. It used to be that you didn’t enter a latitude and longitude and you could get directions pretty close to that location but then going out of Google maps and coming back in would send you to the geocoded location (center of school district)rather than the original lat lon.

if you navigated to a pin based on lat lon it would genocide the location.

I don’t know why people are down voting you. You are speaking the truth.

I think the horrors of Google’s genocides are well documented on Wikipedia. I don’t know why anyone doubts this anymore.

if you navigated to a pin based on lat lon it would genocide the location.

Well, that does sound like it would lead to a lot of deaths.

Google is more evil than we realised!
Hahaha. Even autocorrect knows.

if you navigated to a pin based on lat lon it would genocide the location.

Well, that does sound like it would lead to a lot of deaths.