Another "GPS-caused" Accident Reveals Response Challenges

About Directions

Special Announcement

Newsletter Sign Up

Calendar

Syndicate This Blog

RSS 0.91 feed

RSS 1.0 feed

RSS 2.0 feed

Top Referers

myteams.dot.ga.gov (85)
planetgs.com (75)
www.thegisforum.com (71)
www.spatialsciences.org.au (32)
www.bloglines.com (27)

Our Points

Wednesday, October 1. 2008

Another "GPS-caused" Accident Reveals Response Challenges

You can read the details but essentially, a driver, blindly following his satnav got stuck on the railroad tracks in Bedford Hills, New York and a train hit the car. No one was hurt.

Two items of importance fall out of the story:

(1) The driver called 911 for help instead of the MTA number posted at the crossing. The MTA number currently includes letters and numbers, perhaps making it more difficult to call when under stress. The MTA is considering changing it to all letters. That's probably a good move, but how are they going to get drivers (or anyone) who is panicked to call it over 911? The 911 operator who does receive such a call must then forward it to MTA officials sometimes losing precious time. In this case, the 911 call occurred one minute and the call from 911 to MTA happened in the next minute. That's not too bad in my book.

(2) This is scary: "The state Department of Transportation and the Department of Motor Vehicles, the National Transportation Safety Board and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration do not keep statistics on GPS-related traffic accidents." Why not? I think it's time someone did! An MTA spokesperson noted 4 accidents at that crossing since 2000; the last two involved GPS devices.

- LoHud.com

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Satellite Navigation at 06:28 | Comments (13) | Trackbacks (0) |

Trackbacks

Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments

Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

This really gets me annoyed. Not the guy taking the wrong turn - no, the reactions of the GPS vendor and MTA:

(Raphel Finelli, a spokesman for Magellan GPS) noted that GPS manufacturers do not provide the maps for the devices, which are instead provided by map companies.

"In both instances the common factor is both operators of the vehicle were unfamiliar with the area and were listening to the advice of the device"
(Conner, MTA assistant chief)

Come on people! Consumers buy GPS to find their way around in, let me see, areas they're unfamiliar with!!!! And they don't give a monkeys who provides the maps - the GPS device vendor is the brand name they see on the box. Everyone I know has had a bad steer from a nav system. Many times.

GPS & navigation service vendors (and drivers ) open your eyes!!! There is a safety risk here which can be further mitigated, with positive impacts on customer satisfaction. I'm guessing that the fact that you "sold about a billion of these last year" and haven't heard that people have encountered routing problems may indicate that you haven't asked many of your customers? Prove me wrong! Please!

#1 Peter Barnes on 2008-10-01 16:15 (Reply)

Hey, I'm not defending the driver. Nor am I saying the data was necessarily wrong. What interests me is that a satnav provider spokesperson chooses to take a shot at the data that they're probably contractually bound to use for a while yet, and didn't sit back and say "well, we'll take a look and see if there's anything our company can do to help people avoid these sort of accidents". On the contrary, they've said they've never heard of this sort of accident before, which means they don't take much notice of what happens in the real world! In pointing at the data they've told the public that they're a publisher of 3rd party content, and effectively implied that the content is faulty. Good PR?

As a few people have pointed out it'd be possible to make the instructions more sensible eg. "turn right in 50m, immediately after the railway tracks".

A question for you all. Whose reputation is damaged when a product you chose under performs? Is the the brand on the box that you selected, or the maker of some internal component?

#1.1 Peter Barnes on 2008-10-06 11:14 (Reply)

So the GPS told him to pull on the railroad tracks and stop?

It told him he was at his destination? Did he have the correct language turned on? Perhpas he was blind and did not know where he was?

An accident caused by GPS? Is someone looking for drama or what?

Sorry, this article makes absolutely no sense what-so-ever.

So instead of taking care of the financial mess Congress can now start enacting laws banning GPS units in vehicles, kind of like the way they have handled cell phone use during driving.

I am starting to feel safe and secure already.

#2 David Z. (Link) on 2008-10-02 07:21 (Reply)

Good God, what happened to common sense? You're driving a car and you stop on (or dumber-turn onto) a RR track - couple of outcomes come to mind: 1. I'll stay here and get hit by a train or 2. I can move my car off the track and not get hit. 3. I can turn off the tech devices and try thinking for myself. We all need to spend a week in Norway.

#2.1 Bevo (Link) on 2008-10-03 10:21 (Reply)

This story amazingly also made our local newspaper!!! Its hard to be clear as to what actually occurred and why,... based on the details I saw in a report of this "GPS caused accident" or what that term actually means?? Is this a new version of the data/statistics LoHud implies that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration must keep on: Old Fashioned "Paper Map"-related traffic accidents; "spouse talking/arguing with me about where we're going accidents" or "Distracted by (Pick one - Catchy songs; interesting news stories; or Exciting sporting events) on the radio accidents???? Its scary to imagine what "a driver, blindly following his satnav got stuck on the railroad tracks in Bedford Hills" actually means? Were the tracks he got stuck on part of a non-approved or faulty crossing? Was there an error in the GPS directions or did it just send this poor driver over one of the many, many railroad crossings in America?, Did his car stall/need maintenance, run out of gas, and if so how does that make anyone but the car manufacturer or the owner of the car liable?
This seems to be a case of creative news reporting, making something an eyecatching news story by blamimg a new technology,(which I would gusess helps drivers avoid many more accidents than it causes), for something that may have been caused by any one of a number of other causes.

#3 Dan I. on 2008-10-02 08:38 (Reply)

Any phone number that has letters in it is a HAZARD. My Blackjack and millions of similar SmartPhones and PDAs do not associate numbers with letters on their keyboards. 800 NOT GOOD does not resolve to a dialable string on my phone. It was clever, but now is dangerous.

#4 Sam on 2008-10-02 10:34 (Reply)

To everyone that doesn't understand the issue - it wasn't so much that the car got stuck on the tracks by crossing the tracks as you would at a normal crossing.

The car got stuck because the operator made a turn and proceeded down the tracks as if it were the street. Look at the map on the original story, and you can see that there is a street that is parallel to the tracks, and if you turned too early, you'd be on the tracks.

I am guessing the satnav system instructed him to turn right in 100ft, and he turned at 50ft or something - total driver error.

Oh, by the way, once you turned and went along the direction of the tracks, once your wheels went off the raised area at the crossing, your car would be high-centered on the rails, and you'd not have any way of moving the car under it's own power.

I think they should revoke this guys drivers license. He's not competent enough to make it through a simple crossing without turning onto train tracks, and that seems like a basic fundamental skill that you need to have if you expect to be in control of a moving vehicle.

#5 Dav on 2008-10-02 13:53 (Reply)

If there hav been 4 accidents befor, maybe some one should look at the crossing it self. Or stop trains running on this track;-)

#6 Emanuel (Link) on 2008-10-03 06:36 (Reply)

It seems like an easy issue for the GPS people to solve. If the instructions include turns within 1 street of a set of railroad tracks (which are within 1km of the turn), instruct the driver to avoid turning onto the tracks.

I also think what Emanuel said is interesting as well. If accidents keep happening on the tracks, why not change the design of tracks. If a car accidently turns onto the tracks, it needs to be able to get off those tracks...regardless of why it turned onto the tracks in the first place.

Michael

#7 Michael Imbleau on 2008-10-03 08:02 (Reply)

As a local resident, this is well-known as a very dangerous and troublesome RR crossing. One crosses the RR tracks and, just a few feet beyond, there is a right-turn only onto a local parkway. Both GPS-related accidents were at night, at a poorly lighted crossing, with drivers unfamiliar with the area. To my mind, the RR tracks don't look at all like a street, but with a NAV system asking me to turn right, I might miss the fact that the distances are off by 50 feet. And once one makes this horrible mistake, the car is stuck on the tracks, no recovery possible.

The RR is one of the main commuter lines into NYC, so banning trains on it is probably not a realistic suggestion. Instead, closing the street crossing the tracks is a better idea, I believe.

And I agree with the suggestion that the map providers or NAV system makers should do something. When a railroad track and street are parallel and within a few feet of each other, this is a situation that cries out for some sort of warning.

#8 Alan on 2008-10-03 09:07 (Reply)

Map providers just supply the data to the GPS manufacturers. The map providers do not provide the routing algorithms or the directions. It's up to the GPS manufacturer to add that based on the information in the map database.

If you look at the original map of the location there is approximately 20-30 meters between the railroad and exit from Green Lane onto Saw Mill Parkway - not just a few feet as has been suggested. The (current) map data is bang on in this respect. Regardless of this a GPS Nav system must give a driver a reasonable amount of notice about an upcoming turn. I would say that 20-30 meters is not enough notice - so the instructions would have been given prior to the vehicle crossing the rail lines. This is reasonable. What isn't reasonable is for a driver to blindly turn without using some common sense. The story is about a 2004 Saturn vehicle so it is possible that the map data was out of date. However, I would regard this as irrelevant. You could just as easily get bad directions from your spouse who was reading from a 4 year old map.

What would happen in that case?

"I told you to turn at the next street, not down a railroad you idiot!"

Headline - "Driver blames wife for Accident. - Wife calls husband idiot..."

#9 Nick on 2008-10-03 10:53 (Reply)

If the guy "blindly followed" his GPS device, he would not have ended up driving down a railway line..... GPS navigators don't tell you to do stuff like that, and honestly.... if you can't tell the difference between a paved road and a railway track, I'm not sure you should have a drivers licence.

#10 Anonymous on 2008-10-05 18:29 (Reply)

You obviously haven't driven on the area roads. I was nearby a few years back for some training and the railroad tracks would have been an improvement over the normal roadway.

#10.1 Tom on 2008-10-06 09:33 (Reply)

Add Comment

Name
Email
Homepage
In reply to
Comment	Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (word), underscore are made via _word_. Standard emoticons like :-) and ;-) are converted to images. E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly. Enter the string from the spam-prevention image above:
	Remember Information? Subscribe to this entry

Advertisers

Polls

What's your opinion of the quality of Google's "new" U.S. dataset?

	November '09
Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat	Sun
						1
2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
30