Modern cars may contain GPS systems to guide the driver to unknown
destination locations he would otherwise have to use a map for.
We went out with three cars, of which two were sold with such a GPS
system, ours wasn't, but we were driving in the city I know best.
Both cars with GPS system didn't know that city well enough to reach
the destination location without a map (or GPS system).
After lunch at a restaurant at a distant edge of the city we went back
to the house. Right after leaving the restaurant the three cars
diverted, used different paths. Our car (w/o GPS) and one other car
arrived at the house early. We were wondering where the third car had
gone. Finally, some 10 minutes later, they arrived as well.
What was the reason? Too much trust and depending on modern computer
thingies. The location was stored in the GPS system. In order to
reuse the location it was stored by using letters, but unfortunately
the display wasn't very wide. When storing the name of the city and
some random string the system cut off some parts:
Wilhelmshaven Hotel
Wilhelsmhaven House
Wilhelmshaven Restaurant
`-----------'
Display
So when re-selecting the destination after lunch the driver had to
make the choice which of the three similar looking locations is the
proper one. He had selected the wrong one so the GPS system guided
him to the hotel instead of the house.
This driver used the GPS system of a modern 'VW Passat', the other car
was a 'Audi 100' which has a larger display for the GPS system, so the
driver was guided to the correct address.
Regards,
Joey
-- There are lies, statistics and benchmarks.Please always Cc to me when replying to me on the lists.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Wed Aug 08 2001 - 18:09:34 CEST