GPS Can't Guide The Stupid

When I started flight training in the early '90's, GPS was a classified figment of the imagination. We used charts, a plotter, pencil, compass and common sense. Our time/speed/distance calculations were referred to as deduced reckoning. You had to compensate for wind drift using data gathered by sounding balloons sent out each day by the National Weather Service. You had to account for the difference between magnetic north and 'true' north. You had to use common sense. Then came GPS.

All of a sudden, your neighbor's golden retriever could find any location on the planet's surface within 10
feet. Wow! Now, any idiot with a few dollars has billions of dollars worth of navigation technology at their fingertips and not the slightest inclination of how it works. Cue this story:

"There are times when you need to put the GPS down and look out the window," said Howard Paul, veteran search and rescue official with the Colorado Search and Rescue Board, the volunteer organization that coordinates that state's missions.


"You've got people driving into the middle of a field because a machine showed a route that was shorter and quicker -- which it ultimately is not," said Rob DeBree, undersheriff in Albany County in southeastern Wyoming."


A woman recently spent seven weeks trapped in her car after her husband went looking for help because they relied on their GPS to find the quickest route. If you have a GPS, at least take a road map with you too.