Iowa State Patrol: Stop relying on your GPS to get places

[47of74]

Sigh

The Iowa State Patrol is hoping to encourage motorists to pay more attention to the road by releasing dashcam video of a wrong-way driver's close encounter with a trooper.

The video released from mid-October shows a driver on Interstate 35 who was driving northbound in the southbound lanes for about 20 miles.

An Iowa State Patrol officer was able to stop the male driver just north of Mills Civic Parkway.

Troopers say they want to urge drivers not to drink and drive and to stop relying on their cellphone GPS with the holidays approaching.

[wasupaloopa]

1. I need my cell phone GPS.

It would be worse if I looked at maps.

I like the cell phone telling me my ETA and mileage left to drive.

And telling me where to turn etc.

I’m literally lost without it.

[regnaD kciN]

3. I suspect mention of "cellphone GPS"...

...means they’re talking about Waze, with its inconvenient capability of showing where current police activity and/or speed traps are located.

[regnaD kciN]

2. Because, of course, everyone who uses a nav system on their car...

...winds up driving the wrong way on an interstate freeway for twenty miles.

[Historic NY]

4. It you never update it, it will kill you...

same thing with Garmins, Tom Tom's etc. Maps change, road changes new, disused, construction, incomplete bridges, etc. Manyh of those devices require you to hook it up to the computer to download the new stuff.

[2naSalit]

5. I'm not all that sure about

how well they work in most populated places but I do know that around here, in the mountains, they are dangerous for those unfamiliar with the area. We have to tell people, regularly, that they can't rely on them in this part of the planet.

And driving the wrong way down the Interstate is not a bad as some fates people suffer when they rely on them too much. Get a fucking map, learn how to use it and pull over or study it ahead of time for christfuckingsakes.

People who rely on those damned things for too much are like the idiots who show up at Yellowstone NP (elev. 6700ft - 9000+ft) in flipflops, tank tops and shorts in September demanding to know where the Walmart is so they can get some cheap clothes... two hours minimum from the nearest big box stores.