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My GPS took me to a street that wasn't there, and now I always check the map.
This was about two months ago, driving to a friend's house in a part of town I don't know well. My phone told me to turn left onto Elmwood Avenue, so I did. I drove for a full block, but the street signs all said something else. I looked at the map again, and it still showed me on Elmwood, right next to a park. I pulled over and got out. There was no park, just a row of old houses and a closed-down store. I walked back to the corner, and the sign clearly said 'Maple Street.' I drove around the block, and the map corrected itself, but for those five minutes, it was like I was somewhere else. It wasn't a big deal, but it felt wrong. Now I always look at the street sign itself, not just the blue dot on my phone. Has anyone else had their navigation just show a totally wrong place like that?
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adamgreen7mo ago
Read an article last week about GPS drift, reminds me of what @burns.anna said about that creepy wrong feeling.
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burns.anna7mo ago
Was it just a glitch, or did it feel like you slipped into a different version of your town for a minute? That's the creepy part, when the map is so sure of itself while you're looking at proof it's wrong. I've had that happen where it insisted a gas station was a library, and it makes you doubt everything the phone says after that. It's smart to check the real world signs now, because that blue dot is just a guess (a usually good guess, but still). Those little errors totally break the trust, and you can't just blindly follow directions anymore.
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thomasmitchell7mo ago
Totally used to trust that blue dot without question. One wrong turn into a dead end that my phone swore was a through street fixed that. Now I always glance up at the actual street signs, just in case.
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