As Starry Bush-Rhoads and her husband, John, drove along a remote Oregon road on Christmas Day, their SUV struggling through freshly fallen snow, the familiar female voice of their GPS system informed them that they had just shaved two minutes off their trip home to Reno, Nev.
But when the car got stuck, the couple was stranded for three days in the dark forests of a state wildlife refuge before being found by police, all thanks to a wrong turn recommended by the high-tech gadget.
“We thought it was strange,” Ms. Bush-Rhoads said of the backwoods route. “But then we just figured it knew something we didn't.”
An Oregon couple John Rhoads, 65, and his wife, Starry Bush-Rhoads, 67, spent three days stuck in the woods after their GPS led them down a remote forest road on Christmas day.
According to both MasterCard and Amazon.com, Garmin GPS navigation devices like the one in the Rhoads's car were one of the three most popular gifts this holiday season, along with the iPod touch and the Kindle. But an increasing number of people are being led hopelessly astray by the gadgets, following their electronic directions beyond their better judgment and into some perilous situations.
Ms. Rhoads, 67, and her 65-year-old husband climbed into their large black Toyota Sequoia on Dec. 19 for a holiday road trip that took them to visit family and friends around the Pacific Northwest. They had just stopped at their timeshare in Redmond, Ore., on Friday, Dec. 25, and begun the 400-kilometre journey home when their GPS suggested an alternative route. They turned right onto a country road, passing a sign that warned drivers the route was not maintained during the winter. They drove about 40 kilometres without seeing another car, house or sign of civilization. And that's when they got stuck.
After several hours spent trying to dig the car out using only their gloved hands and a small windshield scraper, the couple hunkered down for their first night in the car. The next morning, Ms. Bush-Rhoads decided to build a fire on several cookie sheets she had brought along to do her holiday baking. But when she tried to ignite some wrapping paper, she found it was inflammable.
“The darned stuff's fireproof,” she joked Tuesday. “It'll save the kids but kill the grandparents!”
Eventually, she managed to start a blaze using the cardboard wrapping of a box of cheese she received as a Christmas gift. Every four hours, the couple would turn on the car for 15 minutes of heat. They munched on salami and nuts they found in a gift basket, took photographs and made snow angels to keep themselves entertained. When she stopped having fun, Ms. Bush-Rhoads would throw a snowball at her husband of 20 years.
Finally, on Sunday afternoon, they managed to get a signal on a cellphone and called 911. The emergency operator took co-ordinates from the cellular signal and police officers located the pair at about 5:30 p.m.
When they got back to civilization, they found a message on their phone from their son – one of the couple's six children – who had been notified of his parents' rescue by police. He wanted to know why they didn't walk until they found a cab.
“He lives near Sacramento,” explained his mother. “We were 37 miles from civilization.”
Garmin, the company that manufactured the couple's GPS unit, released a statement reminding customers that directions offered by the devices are only suggestions, and that “they do not cause drivers to make driving decisions.”
But Chuck Pore, a sheriff's deputy for Lake County, Ore., where the couple was found, said another group was rescued from the same road late Tuesday afternoon, and suggested there might be a glitch in the navigation system.
“I drive that way myself and the GPS does tell you to turn right, but I know it's a dead end,” he said.
Ms. Bush-Rhoads does not blame the GPS, saying she and her husband should have brought snow chains for the trip.
“It's a very good device, but it's a machine,” she said of the GPS. “It's not holding a gun to your head telling us where to go.”
But satellite navigation has created some comedic and catastrophic blunders.
In June, 2009, an Atlanta man's three-bedroom home was mistakenly torn down by a demolition crew following GPS co-ordinates.
A month later, a Swedish couple on holiday in Italy misspelled their destination on a rental car's GPS. They were hoping to visit the island of Capri, but arrived instead in the town of Carpi, 660 kilometres to the north.
And in 2007, a British woman drove her $200,000 Mercedes into a river while following GPS directions to a christening. She was pulled from the car before it was swept away.
