Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tourists stranded in Australian wilderness following faulty Google Maps route

popsci.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 47 posts

Re: Tourists stranded in Australian wilderness following faulty Google Maps route

#31

Post by burrish »

bell-cot wrote: post #27
billyruffian wrote: post #9

I live on an old farm. I'm connected to a neighbour by a track that is narrow, has a steep drop with no barrier and a ford at the bottom. After decent rain, the ford is more like a full-blown river. It is a public footpath but otherwise is only suitable for quads or farm machinery. There's no way of turning around when you're committed. There is not a road or bridleway, there is no public access unless on foot. At so…

Reminds me of one of my dad's old stories - about a prosperous farmer, who lived on a dirt road. The road had a horrible mud hole a hundred yard or so beyond the farmer's barn. By day, his farm work was forever being interrupted by optimists and city folks, who had to offer him several dollars to get him to haul their motor cars out of the mud hole. (Back then, several dollars was serious money.) By night, he never g…

This got me good lmao

Re: Tourists stranded in Australian wilderness following faulty Google Maps route

#32

Post by RandomBacon »

billyruffian wrote: post #14
afr0ck wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't you install a gate with a warning?

There is a gate, with a warning. That stops most of the delivery drivers. Tourists, not so much.

I don't know the laws where you live or background about your situation...

Maybe add a sign with an admission cost and warning that rescues cost a minimum $1000?

Tell them you have two options, you call the police or they pay the posted fees and you pull them out.

Being the nice guy for the first one or two idiots is fine, but I imagine your inconvenience has a cost?

Re: Tourists stranded in Australian wilderness following faulty Google Maps route

#35

Post by Larrikin »

wil421 wrote: post #18
afr0ck wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough. Hope Google will do something about it!

Google will do nothing. I’ve tried for over a decade to get a fake city removed from Google Maps. I’m making the name up but imagine you have a neighborhood near you called Northfield. When google maps started someone from the neighborhood thought it would be great to make up city with the same name. No amount of complaining will remove it. It only exists on Google maps, not on Apple Maps, Waze, Openstreet, or the va…

If this is a true story about a fake city, why use a fake name instead of calling attention to the real issue?

Re: Tourists stranded in Australian wilderness following faulty Google Maps route

#36

Post by genter »

bell-cot wrote: post #29
BonoboIO wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no problem when people kill themself because of their own stupidity, but killing your own children, that it is a tragedy.

I would not be so harsh. They had limited resources, no familiarity whatever with how unforgiving and lethal the wilderness of the American West can be, and made what the local search & rescue folks seem to regard a series of "reasonable, but ultimately tragic" assumptions & decisions.

Maybe they should name it something descriptive and serious. I propose "Death Valley".

Re: Tourists stranded in Australian wilderness following faulty Google Maps route

#37

Post by takinola »

wil421 wrote: post #18
afr0ck wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough. Hope Google will do something about it!

Google will do nothing. I’ve tried for over a decade to get a fake city removed from Google Maps. I’m making the name up but imagine you have a neighborhood near you called Northfield. When google maps started someone from the neighborhood thought it would be great to make up city with the same name. No amount of complaining will remove it. It only exists on Google maps, not on Apple Maps, Waze, Openstreet, or the va…

My understanding is these are called Paper Towns. Map makers add them as a way to identify when their copyright is being violated by others coping the maps wholesale.

Re: Tourists stranded in Australian wilderness following faulty Google Maps route

#38

Post by fred_is_fred »

bell-cot wrote: post #29
BonoboIO wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no problem when people kill themself because of their own stupidity, but killing your own children, that it is a tragedy.

I would not be so harsh. They had limited resources, no familiarity whatever with how unforgiving and lethal the wilderness of the American West can be, and made what the local search & rescue folks seem to regard a series of "reasonable, but ultimately tragic" assumptions & decisions.

Agreed. The sheer scale of the western US in terms of distances, emptiness, and climate hazards are lost on a lot of people from Europe where the next town is 5 miles away and there's probably a nice train to take you there and if you don't make it, it's 65 anyway and there's a stream 100 meters away at all times.

Re: Tourists stranded in Australian wilderness following faulty Google Maps route

#39

Post by eszed »

cqqxo4zV46cp wrote: post #24
yummypaint wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few years ago google maps told my wife and I to "use the left lane to turn right" at an intersection of major 5 lane roads. The diagram even showed a car in the far left turn lane making a suicidal right across all the traffic. I couldn't believe it. Not a new road either. I can understand a bad sequence of directions emerging from the process, but issuing an individual instruction that on it's face is dangerous an…

Jumping in before someone from Melbourne tells you about hook turns.

Jeepers! First I'd ever heard of those. The logic is flawless, but they'd be terrifying to encounter blind.

Re: Tourists stranded in Australian wilderness following faulty Google Maps route

#40

Post by Two4 »

billyruffian wrote: post #9

I live on an old farm. I'm connected to a neighbour by a track that is narrow, has a steep drop with no barrier and a ford at the bottom. After decent rain, the ford is more like a full-blown river. It is a public footpath but otherwise is only suitable for quads or farm machinery. There's no way of turning around when you're committed. There is not a road or bridleway, there is no public access unless on foot. At so…

It may be worth sending them a lawyer's letter threatening to sue for costs and damages (or whatever the lawyer says) unless they fix the issue. It's faster and easier and cheaper for them to placate you than to even send a lawyer's letter back. You don't have to follow through, necessarily - just poke them in the face rather than the ass.
Post reply on HN