Apple Maps: The Easiest Way to Crash Into an Airplane

[marmar]

Apple Maps: The Easiest Way to Crash Into an Airplane
Posted on Sep 28, 2013


The iPhone and iPad app has been known to give erroneous directions, but this month it led drivers to near-death situations. On Sept. 6 and 20, Apple maps pointed two cars to cross a runway at Alaska’s Fairbanks International Airport. The directions were meant to culminate at a terminal, but rather than end up at a check-in counter, these passengers found themselves on the tarmac.

No one was injured in either incident and the airport notified Apple on Sept. 6 as soon as the first person ended up on the runway. Apple subsequently disabled the inaccurate instructions, but according to The Associated Press via The San Diego Union-Tribune:

To the chagrin and worry of Alaska transportation officials, Apple reactivated maps app directions Friday that guide drivers to the edge of a runway instead of a terminal at the Fairbanks airport….

Officials, though, noticed the app was back to giving the misguided directions on Friday and was also providing another route that leads to the taxiway.

They don’t know why the app was reactivated with more faulty directions. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/apple_maps_the_easiest_way_to_crash_into_an_airplane_20130929

[rickford66]

1. what?

How could you drive a car near a runway? Alarms go off if you get past security on foot.

[jmowreader]

2. You know that curved piece of glass in front of you when you're driving?

Looking through it when you get to the airport will keep you from inadvertent runway incursions.

[1-Old-Man]

3. Yeah, but its sooooo hard to text and look out that thing at the same time.

After all, one must have priorities.

[Heddi]

4. Back around 2009 I worked at an ER in Florida

we got lots of tourists who were staying at the beach and what-not, we weren't too far of a drive from disney, etc.

And this guy comes in...he was in town for a convention...driving his rental car with GPS back from convention to wherever he was staying.

GPS tells him to take a left...he takes a left...into a field. Non-paved field. Just, yanno, field.

So he keeps driving in the field which and he takes a right through field and into a huge ditch. Keeps driving because GPS tells him to. Ends up in a deeper ditch which is filled with water. He's all banged up and his car is half submerged.

It was night but not black-black night...7:30 or 8pm. Dusky.

I ask him "so, didn't you think that maybe the GPS was wrong when it told you to drive through a field?"
Him "well it's the GPS so I figured it knew where it was taking me"

I said "Do you routinely take off-road routes in rental cars when driving through unfamilliar places? I mean, you didn't drive through a field to get to the convention, did you?

Him "Look, lady, don't give me a ration of shit. The GPS told me to turn left so I turned left. It told me to turn right and I turned right. That GPS put me in the ditch, not me"

I said "DID YOU EVER THINK THAT MAYBE THE GPS WAS WRONG AS YOU WERE DRIVING INTO A DITCH, THEN ANOTHER DITCH FULL OF WATER?"

Him: "I thought the GPS knew where to go..."

He was so fucking adamant that regardless of what the road in front of him looked like, if the GPS said to go there, he went there. Ditch or not.

Had he been a few miles to the west he'd have ended up in the fucking Gulf of Mexico


You cannot fix stupidity.

BTW, his blood alcohol was 0, and his drug screen was negative. His only impairment was the soft gray sponge in his skull