A day from hell

[FL-JOE]

If I wouldn't have experienced driving truck-tractor-trailers in the military almost 47 years ago I would have probably already ran into about the same situation Neal. Sounds like you "dug" your way out of it okay though.

I've said this before but it may bear repeating. When you purchase one of these large class A DPs (over 38') with a toad you give up the right to just meander around the country following a GPS. You may get away with it for a year, maybe for 4 or 5 years, but sooner or later you will get in a bind.

Moving a piece of equipment (my RV) that weighs almost 30 tons with my toad and is just over 66 feet long requires me to stay on designated interstates and highways. These are the highways approved for commercial traffic. If and when I need to get off these routes to get into a fuel stop, campground, or boondock site I pull my Trucker's Atlas and make sure the secondary roads will work for me. In addition I have never booked a campground without first viewing it on google earth. I want to see what the entrance looks like and surrounding area.

Once again Neal, I'm glad you came out of this in good shape (you and the little one).

 

[Kevin D Pem]

You bounced your story off us. Hope the book has a bunch of these! Glad your OK.

 

[Neal]

To be clear this was NOT a GPS issue. The issue was I entered the "mailing address" for the campground instead of the physical address as some sites have multiple addresses, I chose wrong, even more so I didn't verify as I rarely look at the entire route. A little better preparation is what was needed. The Garmin 770 has been great to date, the only troubles I have with it are leaving fuel stops as it keeps wanting to go on a re-route after I get off the interstate. This is the one time where you need to disregard the GPS and get yourself back to the interstate. Again, this story was not a failure of the GPS, the GPS routed me on roads per my params, this was a planning error which resulted in an input error.

One other part of this story was I arrived at around 5:30 PM. As I was at the bottom of the mountain the sun was already shading off of the mountains and days are getting shorter. I had about an hour to right this wrong before abandoning as no way I was driving these roads after sunset.

I have all this on dashcam, I'll look through the videos now. If I want to share any of it I'll report back, I may opt for therapy instead!

P.S. I didn't realize the dashcam was recording audio as I thought I had that turned off so as not to offer my critiques of fellow drivers on video. Back to reviewing the haunting footage.

 

[MapNerd]

To be clear this was NOT a GPS issue.

Well, as the MapNerd I can tell you there is no such thing as a 100% accurate GPS. Typically, by the time we’ve collected the field observations from vendors, identified the adds, deletes and changes, integrates it all into our database and done our testing and are ready to ship an update, the data in the update is 9 months old.

The integration process much faster on crowd sourced and web based platforms like Google, Waze and Apple Maps but they don’t support the type of sophisticated routing algorithms and routing network capabilities that we need, so we’re all forced back to the legacy platforms like Garmin which relies on data vendors like TomTom and Here/NavTeq, who in turn rely on other vendors to collect that data for them in the field.

It’s an antiquated process of how those data updates get to your device. BUT, as a MapNerd that knows how these systems operate, I would go out on a limb and say it is a GPS issue. I have worked not directly on a GPS system itself but I have worked on the routing data and network integration and I can tell you, no system I have ever worked on would allow you to navigate to an address that was not reachable given your routing constraints. It shouldn’t be possible because our routing network datasets simply can not connect the two dots across the routing network (eg streets) because all available paths are blocked by barriers (eg routing or vehicle restrictions)

Typical vehicle routing constraints are width, height, weight, length and hazmat. The first four are obvious and the last is special only to commercial trucks. However, many GPS systems oddly do not support that fourth constraint - length. The reason is because it’s more work and requires really good data as you have to at a minimum, know the width and maximum radius of every turn in order to determine whether or not a long vehicle can make that turn or not.
Without it, you can’t know and so every turn in your app is just a turn, whose restrictions are not based on “vehicle fit” but just routing rules, such as whether or not you can legally turn left at the given junction. If no rules prevent it, the GPS will tell you to do it, not realizing it’s a 12’ radius and impossible for a 45’ box with a 15’ pivot to navigate.

The best thing to do in my opinion is to use a commercial truck GPS. These have many additional routing parameters and implement these rules better than your off the shelf Garmin. Those Garmin that support height and width still aren’t usually meant for usage by drivers of 20-ton rigs. They’re meant for 5ers and SUVs pulling a boat, that are both shorter than us and have a better turning radius, as well as the ability to reverse.

Personally, I use TruckMap (iOS | Android)
It’s free and meant for use by commercial truckers and if they fit, I know I will. It’s not perfect and it has steered me wrong once, but it was a minor issue that was easy to resolve.

what I am saying is, the fact that you put in the wrong address is irrelevant. It should not have routed you down a road that you could not navigate given your vehicle constraints, assuming they are all properly configured.

if you put in the address to the moon and it told you to drive “up”, would that be a data entry issue or a GPS issue? No well designed and implemented system should allow the impossible or dangerous.

 

[jmltech]

Wow Neal. I can’t even imagine what I would have done in a similar situation. Maybe turn around and head to an alternate site. Glad you came out okay.

 

[J&JD]

To be clear this was NOT a GPS issue. The issue was I entered the "mailing address" for the campground instead of the physical address as some sites have multiple addresses, I chose wrong, even more so I didn't verify as I rarely look at the entire route. A little better preparation is what was needed. The Garmin 770 has been great to date, the only troubles I have with it are leaving fuel stops as it keeps wanting to go on a re-route after I get off the interstate. This is the one time where you need to disregard the GPS and get yourself back to the interstate. Again, this story was not a failure of the GPS, the GPS routed me on roads per my params, this was a planning error which resulted in an input error.

One other part of this story was I arrived at around 5:30 PM. As I was at the bottom of the mountain the sun was already shading off of the mountains and days are getting shorter. I had about an hour to right this wrong before abandoning as no way I was driving these roads after sunset.

I have all this on dashcam, I'll look through the videos now. If I want to share any of it I'll report back, I may opt for therapy instead!

P.S. I didn't realize the dashcam was recording audio as I thought I had that turned off so as not to offer my critiques of fellow drivers on video. Back to reviewing the haunting footage.

@Neal ,
Are you SURE you want to get back into flying??

 

[Neal]

@Neal ,
Are you SURE you want to get back into flying??

I'll stick to FlightSim 2020

 

[AbdRahim]

Hey Neal, you'd be surprised at what hills the gassers can pull. I stayed at a campground, literally on a mountain this summer. After traveling up a seven mile hill on the interstate (I could barely maintain 55 mph). I arrived and parked on what looked like a 40-45 degree angle. I made sure I engaged the parking brake. Then I followed the golf cart up the side of the mountain, wondering if this huge machine could make it. It did with no problem. Of course I did not dare leave first gear.

 

[whereRVapp]

Glad to hear to you made it. I can only imagine the frustration of this experience!

 

[bpaikman]

I take a look-see on Google Earth, also, before venturing onto unknown routes. I kid you not, one route that was plotted for us in north Texas, ended up being nothing more than a meandering cow trail, and definitely never reached the destination before it petered out.
If the google car has never been down a certain road (and it hadn’t - I had to look at it in 2D) then I KNOW our rig probably has no business on it. ?