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Get Off My Lawn! Homeowners Ward Off Drivers Misled by GPS (wsj.com) 215

Posted by msmash from the stranger-things dept.
People on the receiving end of addled smartphone navigation deal with the lost; 'Somebody backed into our mailboxes.' From a report: Everett Ogden's dream house was a three-bedroom at the end of a quiet dead-end road along a river in Jacksonville, Fla. It wasn't long after moving in about a year ago that the strangers started to pull up, sometimes eight a day. The driveway is narrow, so they often do U-turns on the lawn and sometimes run over the sprinklers. "Just yesterday," said Mr. Ogden, 42, "somebody backed into our mailboxes." Drivers have made news for relying too much on navigation apps like those from Alphabet's Google Maps and Apple's maps app. They've driven onto airport runways, through muddy fields, into lakes. Then there are the other victims of addled navigation, those living on the receiving end of ill-conceived directions the algorithms deal out.

Mr. Ogden, who works in sales, spent time with Google Maps and cracked the issue: When people wanted to travel from town to streets in a nearby naval base, the mapping service routed them through Mr. Ogden's lot. He made a spreadsheet, and "there were 47 different streets that would point to our house." He reported them to Google and 20 were fixed, he said. Google said it is working to resolve Mr. Ogden's routes. [...] Google Maps and Apple Maps have support pages and app functions that let users submit edits to directions for review. Some users say corrections can take months to be approved, if they're accepted at all. Residents sometimes must take matters into their own hands.
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Get Off My Lawn! Homeowners Ward Off Drivers Misled by GPS More

Get Off My Lawn! Homeowners Ward Off Drivers Misled by GPS

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  • One Possible Solution (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Scarletdown ( 886459 ) on Friday July 26, 2019 @11:48AM (#58991886) Journal

    Mr. Ogden could possibly simply add a gate to his driveway.

    And that will be tree fiddy for that advice please. :D

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday July 26, 2019 @11:54AM (#58991928)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • After hooligans knocked over my childhood mailbox for the Nth time, the 4x4 buried in the sandy dirt was replaced with an old surplus railroad tie buried at least 4 feet down using a big heap of skull sized rocks to fill things back in. 35 years later Google Maps still shows that same railroad tie holding up quite nicely.

        • oil field pipe also worked. Until they made it illegal.

        • Hooligans (Score:4, Funny)

          by sjbe ( 173966 ) on Friday July 26, 2019 @12:56PM (#58992406)

          After hooligans knocked over my childhood mailbox for the Nth time, the 4x4 buried in the sandy dirt was replaced with an old surplus railroad tie buried at least 4 feet down using a big heap of skull sized rocks to fill things back in. 35 years later Google Maps still shows that same railroad tie holding up quite nicely.

          My grandfather once had guys driving around with baseball bats knocking over his mailbox. He simply filled his mailbox with a substantial amount of rock one evening. When he was visited a few hours later by a young man with a bat out the window of his car the young gentleman broke his arm hitting the suddenly MUCH heavier and harder mailbox.

          Never had that problem again.

          • I've heard of a similar tactic that entails centering a regular mailbox (with the door removed) inside of a larger mailbox (both USPS-approved of course), then pouring a bit of concrete in the space between the two. More work, but remains functional as a mailbox while accomplishing similar results.

            • They had a mailbox baseball tradition in my prior neighborhood. The landlords had a mailbox made out of 1/4" steel after losing a couple of mailboxes. One day when I went to get the mail, there was a broken piece of old 2x3 (weird) next to the mailbox. Much chuckling ensued.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by flink ( 18449 )

                A friend of mine in high school had their mailbox mounted on a long chunk of pipe with a swivel at the bend. If it got hit it would just swing around.

            • I've heard of a similar tactic that entails centering a regular mailbox (with the door removed) inside of a larger mailbox (both USPS-approved of course), then pouring a bit of concrete in the space between the two. More work, but remains functional as a mailbox while accomplishing similar results.

              In certain rural areas near where I have lived in the past you almost have to encase your mailbox in such a manner. Why? Because young gentlemen with an abundance of time and ammo along with a lack of decency and respect on their hands like to perforate mailboxes in order to demonstrate their marksmanship skills with various firearms. Failure to protect your mailbox in such a manner will result in you replacing mailboxes on a regular basis or having a lot of very wet mail.

              Yes it's illegal to shoot a mail

        • Had the same thing in the house I grew up in. There was a large, steep hill next to our house that people loved to drive down fast. We went through several mailboxes before my parents just built a brick one and it was no longer attacked by bat-wielding-teenaged-assholes.

      • When I was young some neighborhood kids were doing this, driving by and hitting mailboxes with a bat. So my dad installed our mailbox onto an upside down L shaped poll that would happily swing in the hole it sat in. The next time we heard them drive by:
        - we hear boom (from the bat hitting the mailbox),
        - then a crashing sound as the mailbox swung around and knocked their back window out.

        That stopped them pretty quickly.

        • Brilliant! My box is suitably anchored but if it's vandalized again I'll weld up something similar.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Pascoea ( 968200 )
          We use similar devices up north to prevent mailbox damage from snow plows. Granted if your box gets clipped you're still buying a new box, but at least the pole/post will generally survive. I do like your modified version better.
      • Most of these apocryphal stories about reinforced mailboxes are just vicarious wish fulfillment. The truth is that all mailboxes and supports have to be approved by the U. S. Postal Service [usps.com]. An unauthorized or out-of-spec mailbox will result in the USPS stopping service to your address. (Yes they will stop service - that's how I learned about mailboxes needing to be USPS approved.)

        Not saying the story couldn't be true. Just that in order for it to be true, your father would've first had to have submi

        • You assume that the USPS delivery person is going to be a vindictive pedant...

          • You assume that the USPS delivery person is going to be a vindictive pedant...

            Ever heard the phrase "going postal"? Work at the USPS long enough and you will become a vindictive pedant, if only in self defense. The USPS seems to attract that sort, to the point it has become a cliche. There's been more than 40 people killed since the late 1980s by USPS employees, mostly other employees. Five alone in 2017. It's bad and it's not getting any better.

        • Really, around here the mail carrier is only going to give you a warning notice if the mailbox is in such a state that it inconveniences his daily delivery. Too far of reach, too short, mail falls back out, etc.

          The rest becomes a violation when you get sued because the guy swerving to miss a pedestrian or animal sustains injury within the vehicle because your mailbox did not give because the install violates postal regulations.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tsstahl ( 812393 )

          Most of these apocryphal stories about reinforced mailboxes are just vicarious wish fulfillment. .

          That is just silly. I couldn't swing a dead cat by the tail without hitting protected mailboxes where I'm at. Most folks put some sort of barrier directly adjacent to the mailbox. A galvanized fence pole is the most common barrier. Fence posts are cheap, ubiquitous, about the same height once set, and all sorts of reflectors and flags are sold ready made to attach to them. As long as the carrier can deliver, there isn't much to say.

          The biggest complainers about stupid level mailbox barriers are the sno

        • Re: One Possible Solution (Score:4, Informative)

          by anegg ( 1390659 ) on Friday July 26, 2019 @03:46PM (#58993594)
          The USPS cares about the actual mailbox (sort of). They don't much care about how you mount it, as long as it meets the placement rules (height and distance from the curb). They have some suggestions for posts, but don't dictate anything. https://www.usps.com/manage/mailboxes.htm [usps.com]
        • I'm gonna guess you spent a lot of time as a child standing on the sidewalk yelling "you can't touch me! This is government property!" at your neighbors. The only people who care about these kinds of things are people who join HOA boards.

          p.s.: the mailman doesn't give a rat's ass if your mailbox is compliant or not unless it makes his or her job harder. If the USPS stopped service, you got ratted out by some neighbor who didn't like you, and I can totally understand why.

          p.p.s: My mailbox was custom mad

        • Depends very much on location!

          One rather stout steel beam box support near me has been in place at least twenty years and it's unmistakable. Reinforced box mounts (supporting standard or non-standard boxes) are common in my bit of South Carolina and our postal folks give zero fucks.

          The right communities consider resisting vandalism a Good Thing.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Pascoea ( 968200 )

          The page you linked uses a lot of "flimsy" legal language. "The best mailbox supports are stable but bend or fall away if a car hits them. The Federal Highway Administration recommends... Avoid unyielding and potentially dangerous supports..." (Emphasis mine)

          The box itself must meet USPS guidelines, but the supports/mounting appear to be just guidelines (unless you can find some sort of regulation legalese, I didn't see anything after a quick search.)

          • "The best mailbox supports are stable but bend or fall away if a car hits them.

            "Best" is a fraught term. Put up a mailbox like what you describe near where I live and it's going to get knocked over the first time a snowplow goes by it after a good sized snowfall. Nothing malicious and the snowplow drivers aren't trying to do it but it's a real problem. Gotta keep the roads clear for obvious reasons. So you kind of have to put up something pretty robust that is hard to knock down. The downside is that it's going to do some real damage to any car that hits it. Not sure of any good

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by anegg ( 1390659 )

        I lived on a cul-de-sac and had a problem with people turning around in my driveway and hitting my mailbox, breaking the post. First I tried putting in a bigger post, anchored in more concrete... that didn't work.

        What did work was to use an ordinary 4x4 pressure treated post with a simple metal prong on the bottom that stuck into the ground. Whenever the post/mailbox got hit, it would just fall over. It was very simple to pick it up and stick it back into the ground. A soft defense against force can be

        • This is also what landscape boulders are for. Blocking cars, but doing it in a pleasant way.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by anegg ( 1390659 )
            Yes; I put landscape boulders on the two sides of the entrance to my driveway at the same address. Idiots turning around in the driveway kept cutting the turn (despite my widening the driveway) and getting their wheels in the ditch and crushing the end of my drainage culvert that ran under the driveway.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It sounds like a missed business opportunity. A toll gate with a roundabout behind it, could provide a nice secondary income stream.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Also put a visible sign out front that says, "Private Property. Violators will be shot on sight. Your GPS is wrong. Get off my lawn." Then put another sign next to it that says, 'Violators shot so far: 3'" where the number is clearly pasted on. Nobody's gonna risk that.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      Preferably a massive, impact-proof gate.

    • And another $$$$ for the lien from the HOA.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Simply huh? Depends on the gate, also if it truly is a public road, dead-end or not, the no he can't. If it's a private road, then he'd have to have all other home owners along that road agree, then depending on the type of gate you want, the cost can easily be $20k for that too.

      You must rent an apartment somewhere....

    • Mr. Ogden could possibly simply add a gate to his driveway.

      I think the point is that he shouldn't have to incur inconvenience and expense because of other peoples errors and stupidity.

      We have a somewhat analogous problem at my house. We have a steep and long driveway that in the winter is difficult to navigate if you have a vehicle that doesn't do well in snow and ice (it's no biggie if you do have 4wd and/or snow tires). At least once a winter we have some idiot that decides to drive down our driveway and gets stuck. Causes huge inconvenience for us because the

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by pjt33 ( 739471 )

      Or put up a sign. This isn't a new problem: I took this photo [imgur.com] back in 2012 in north Wales.

    • naaa, Drive spikes through a rubber mat. and put it at the beginning of his driveway. Make sure he designs it so that he can pick it up and move it when ever he is leaving or coming back. His property, why not? Put a sign at the front of the driveway saying private property, stay out. If they drive over the mat and the spikes, get a flat tire. Lesson learned. Bet google fix's the map going through is property real quick.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by flink ( 18449 )

        That was my first thought as well, but then you have an angry idiot with a flat tire blocking your driveway.

  • No excuse (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I don't give 2 f*cks what Google Maps says, there is no excuse for entering private property and worse being a bumbling destructive oaf on top of that. People are such garbage.

  • Google is pretty good at adding corrections (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Google is pretty good at adding corrections to their maps. Apple... is not. They draw the street I live on as being accessed via someone's driveway. Have for years. Never been corrected.

    But there's another issue. Even when you know the route is wrong, both Google and Apple won't let you flag a direction as impossible. Just last night I wound up on a route where the police had closed an on ramp Google wanted me to take. Driving past it generated a set of instructions to take me right back to it.

    There's no wa

    • This was actually the right way to handle the situation, vs grabbing the shotgun and chasing those bastards away.

      Jury's out on which is more satisfying though.

      • Yeah. Google is lucky that he cares enough to try to fix the problem. I think it'd be easier just to get a good gate. It's unfortunate that companies sometimes make it so you have to have superhuman determination to contribute something good.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I'm guessing Google has changes their correction policy then, because my experience was the exact opposite.

      Our private workplace parking lot was labeled a "road" in google maps, which meant people would pull in and park there to access the bike path and creek behind our workplace.

      No amount of signage stopped them.

      Eventually we realized the issue with google maps. Easy fix right?

      I submitted a correction to google explaining it wasn't a roadway. They take the submission and say it will be reviewed. A few

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by PPH ( 736903 )

        Just forward a copy of the county assessor's property map to Google. But beware. There are many parking lots, side yards and driveways (see Howard Schultz, ex Starbucks CEO) that are in fact public land. There are entire neighborhood plats that have never been developed, with designated public streets. In the middle of the woods. Where some crazy guy with a shotgun will run out and confront you for being on 'his property'.

        • Some people just don't care. Our building is near a major stadium and people feel that they should be able to park in any nearby parking lot they want. We have a guard blocking the entrance with a chain on game days, but there have been tailgate parties in front of empty buildings. The building next door to us charges $40 for parking and stations someone there to collect fees (and yes, some people pay it).

    • IMHO, intentionally driving against their directions almost always results in a new route that's logical, and not just a relentless attempt to route you back to the original route. I drive with Google Maps routing enabled just for the traffic levels and arrival time, even when I know the route I want to take. I often deviate from the original maps-suggested route in the last 5-6 miles to avoid major traffic snarls, and Maps nearly always puts me on a route about what I'm taking anyway.

      The only time recent

    • You can switch to 'manual' mode, look at the map and figure out where you should drive yourself. You don't even need to get to the destination, just drive a few blocks or so and the service will create a new route.

    • There's no way to say "these instructions are impossible, please generate a new route" while driving. (You can stop, re-enter your destination, and then pick a different route, but that's not helpful while driving.)

      Thankfully, Google Waze does that.

      It will automatically re-generate a new route as soon as you indicate a blockage on your existing route.

      I love Waze.

      • The problem with Waze is that it routes through residential roads, which is highly annoying and inconvenient to quiet neighborhoods that are suddenly full of impatient commuters driving too fast.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sjames ( 1099 )

      That would be a helpful feature. Someone trying to get to my house faced a similar problem when a storm blew a tree over across the road Google wanted her to use. It seemed there was no way to get Google to re-consider and no way to tell it the road was blocked. There was an easy alternative route, but how to make Google use it?

      The desktop version of maps used to let you re-compute routed by dragging a waypoint until it re-computed, but that isn't available in the mobile version of the app. And, in order to

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tsstahl ( 812393 )

        So I have this picture of someone paralyzed with fear parked in the middle of the road staring at a tree. The concepts of parallelism and perpendicularity in conjunction with compass points are some sort of magic?

        I'm sure I could find an xkcd strip addressing it...

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sjames ( 1099 )

          More like go back to the last turn and go a different direction only to have google keep trying to go back to the tree even after passing by another perfectly good route that Google considered less suitable for unknown reasons.

      • Just look at the map on the phone and figure out the route on your own. You're not required to make the turns that the phone tells you to take. Use the phone the same way you would use a paper map.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sjames ( 1099 )

          That will certainly do it. Of course, many people were never all that good at using maps and you'll have to memorize the route since unlike a printed map, interacting with your phone while driving carries a stiff fine. The rest of it is training. People have gotten used to the phone telling them when to turn.

    • Google and Apple too often try to deal with traffic, and I think it's stupid. At the least leave a way to disable this feature. I like to look up the direction ahead of time since I don't have GPS in the car and I don't want to look at a tiny phone with bad eyes while driving. So inevitably Google shows some bizarre route because I'm looking up directions when there's traffic on the road and it think I'm driving NOW and want to avoid that traffic. For me, I don't care, let me go the slow way instead of

  • Autonomous Vehicles (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 26, 2019 @11:59AM (#58991968)

    And Autonomous Vehicles will be using that same map data....

  • Maps, not GPS (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 26, 2019 @12:16PM (#58992100)
    This is all about map applications and has nothing to do with GPS. GPS still works just fine. GPS never leads you more than a few feet astray, assuming it's up at all.

  • Lack of "Fluff Classes" in schools. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Friday July 26, 2019 @12:17PM (#58992104)

    I expect the biggest problem is for the past couple of generations. There has been such a movement to make sure Schools Focus on Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic, which are great classes for consistent grading and standardized testing. However this focus has come on the heals of the "Fluff Classes" where students learn useful life skills. Home Economics covers Cooking and Sewing but also balancing your check book and budgeting your life. Shop Class which covers cutting wood, and bending plastic but also teaches problem solving skills, and applying available tools to help solve problems. The Arts, which teaches students how to look at and solve problems differently.

    Now how does this all apply to GPS drivers going on private property? Well these people are not necessarily stupid, or rude people. But people who grew up in a system of do what you are told and not think for yourself. The GPS is telling them where to go, they never were taught skills to question the tool they are using, because they were taught not following what you are told will only get you in trouble. There were not classes which help guided kids into thinking for themselves, and realize guidelines are what they are, suggestion, but not necessarily a hard fast rule.

    • Re:Lack of "Fluff Classes" in schools. (Score:4)

      by kenai_alpenglow ( 2709587 ) on Friday July 26, 2019 @12:31PM (#58992238)
      If you blindly follow a GPS device, you are stupid. If you damage people's property from your misuse of said device, you are rude. If you don't pay for the damages you are criminal. No excuses.
    • Eh, I agree with your assessment that people do not think for themselves, but I doubt that it is really the school system that is to blame. Our schooling is more a symptom of a deeper and longer-lasting problem. Even a cursory glance at history shows that the vast majority of humanity have always been in the business of following blindly rather than thinking critically. This is a trait not simply of the masses but even of many of the so-called educated elite. After all, even many college-educated people wit

      • Ha, back when I was a kid my father who was a teacher took a CPR class with several other teachers. Halfway through the exam at the end, one of the fellow teachers leaned over and asked "what did you get for question 3?"

    • They've done studies that show the brain fires neurons in very different patterns when trying to navigate from a real-time GPS type map, vs. doing the navigating in your head and based on memory and what you see as you drive past.

      It's just a different thought process to navigate by GPS.

      It's not that you fail to question what the nav system is telling you to do because you lack those critical thinking skills (at least for most users!). It's more the matter of your focus being trained as much on its updates

    • Agreed about people not thinking for themselves in general, but I don't think that's what's going on here. In order to think for yourself in this situation, you have to already know the roads in the area. And if you knew that, you wouldn't need to use GPS in the first place. People who think for themselves in this situation reference their route on a map first. Which nowadays means plot a route on Google Maps or rely on your car's GPS navigation.

      So the problem is in fact with Google or Apple or which

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Livius ( 318358 )

      Home Economics covers Cooking and Sewing but also balancing your check book and budgeting your life. Shop Class which covers cutting wood, and bending plastic but also teaches problem solving skills, and applying available tools to help solve problems.

      I'm sure there are good classes in some schools, but there definitely bad ones as well, which don't teach anything extra and are pretty weak at their primary goal.

      I suspect it is more that a lot of people just think that computers should never be questioned, and can't really understand the difference between a service being 99% and 100% reliable (hint: it's actually quite a bit), even though they do not also blindly follow advice from strangers, printed books, or old-fashioned maps.

  • Do mapping systems need to hire local people to cover areas vs people who can be 1000's of miles away making the calls on what is approved?

  • Not using addresses (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I have generally found these problems occur with Google maps when the search is done using a point of interest or business name instead of a street address. The direction are to the GPS coordinates of the POI or Business, which may be closer to another road than the actual entrance. For example if you search for the name of my work, which is about 1/4 mile off the road, Google directs you down a dead end gravel road behind the building. It then suggests walking the last 100 yards through a creek and woods.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Of course. With every damn idiot following GPS these days, having the odd car go the wrong place in an odd specific location with a peculiarity in no way negatively affects self driving cars.

  • Map publishers often include non-existent streets to identify unauthorized copies. The famed Thomas Bros. maps of Los Angeles showed "Greenleaf Drive" looping through an elementary school and cutting across the golf course on the other side of the street. Google Maps identifies my neighbors' long private driveway as a public road, and uses it as a way point in their directions (good luck looking for that street sign!) I wonder how many of the "navigational errors" reported in this article were the result of

  • I moved recently and there were two mistakes on Google Maps - one where it wanted you to walk 15 minutes to the station because it didn't realise there was a path available and another where it wanted you to take a left in your car onto a road which had been blocked by bollards.

    I submitted corrections for both of them to Google and they were reviewed, accepted and updated in the space of a fortnight.

    Sure there are other mapping companies but, once you've got Google and Apple corrected, that will significant

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