GPS and traffic pattern changes

August 11, 2013 2:47 PM

Has there been any instances where traffic patterns or roads changed because of GPS use?

I was heading somewhere and my GPS took me into a residential area where speed bumps and signs alerted me to go slow. While they probably were there before GPS was popular because locals knew it was a shortcut, has there ever been anyone complaining that there has been more traffic on their street or neighborhood because of GPS use? If there has, have companies ever rerouted their routes because of it?

posted by daninnj to Travel & Transportation (12 answers total)

I remember some years back reading a story in the news about how all the foreign truck drivers in the UK (from some eastern-European EU country, I think) were relying on GPS instead of local knowledge, and this was resulting in a lot of extra truck traffic through the centres of towns and villages.
posted by Emanuel at 2:55 PM on August 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

There's a twisty road between Roanoke and Smith Mountain Lake, VA that has signs telling truckers to ignore their gps because the road is too dangerous for large vehicles.
posted by brilliantine at 3:08 PM on August 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

There is also a sign on RT 3 approaching Culpepper VA from the East warning truckers to ignore their GPS and stay on Rt3.
posted by COD at 3:42 PM on August 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

There is a shiny new sign on the rural mountain road where my friends live (in VT) that reads "NOT A THROUGH ROAD"* because Google Maps/GPS insist that you can drive over the mountain to get to the next town. In reality, the road goes about 2 miles past the sign and then becomes an undriveable trail.


*I think that's the wording, anyway.
posted by shiny blue object at 4:08 PM on August 11, 2013

Every time I hit a traffic jam now, I see people do an (illegal) U-turn and take a different route. I think that this is due to them hitting the "detour" button on their GPS.
posted by goethean at 4:14 PM on August 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

I think you're asking more about traffic-related rationales, but this is related:
GPS Puts Hollywood Sign on the Beaten Path
GPS directions to Hollywood sign will change

Ah, here's something more on point (but still different -- similar street names):
GPS confusion makes Towson neighborhood a truck stop on the road to Dundalk

Closer to your scenario:
Local dead-end road confounds GPS units with outdated data

More tragically:
GPS Mistake Allegedly Leads to Deadly Driveway Shooting
posted by dhartung at 4:49 PM on August 11, 2013 [2 favorites]

GPS use has caused several fatal incidents in Death Valley.
posted by zsazsa at 4:58 PM on August 11, 2013

Response by poster: Actually dhartung, the first two are exactly what I was looking for. The rest of the posts are interesting also.

goethean, my sophomore year I was in a dorm on one of the main roads in the neighborhood when all of a sudden I heard a crash. The others living in the dorm and I run out to the bridge about 100 feet away and see an SUV that hit a car. The guy in the SUV says to us "My GPS told me to make a U-turn so I did!"
posted by daninnj at 6:41 PM on August 11, 2013

Emanuel's post reminds me of a story I read a couple years ago about how some English villages not only had lorry drivers coming through them because they were following GPS instructions, but also that some were getting stuck in narrow lanes where they couldn't turn, sometimes damaging historic buildings.
posted by brianogilvie at 7:17 PM on August 11, 2013

There are numerous signs saying things like "Route X is not recommended for trucks" in the mountains, but I remember them from my childhood, well before GPS came on the scene. In the area where I currently live, the biggest issue is that there are a few suburban cul-de-sacs that the GPS reports as being through roads when they definitely aren't; one is separated by a pretty deep gully and creek, while the other was closed and gated for traffic reasons some time ago.

It plays havoc with telling people how to get to my house: "Just tell me your address!" "Well, okay, it's 555 Meat Machine Rd, but you can't trust your GPS. When it tells you to turn right on Oak St, ignore it, and then it will tell you to make a U-Turn. Ignore that too, just go straight. Then it will say you should turn right on Elm. Do that, then it will say you need to turn left... don't, or you'll drive into a creek. Keep going straight. Turn left when it says to do it next."
posted by sonic meat machine at 8:23 PM on August 11, 2013

A few years ago there was a big rockslide that completely closed I-40 somewhere in the mountains between Knoxville, TN and Asheville, NC. For about a year, if you wanted to go between those two cities, you had to take I-81 north to Kingsport and then I-26 south to Asheville (unless you were coming west, of course). You can see that this is quite a detour --- added a couple of hours to the trip, I think. But despite the HUGE SIGNS leading up the 40/81 junction saying "I-40 totally closed 40 miles ahead, Asheville traffic take I-81", there were lots of transfer truck drivers who followed their GPS to the rockslide and had to turn around from there. I don't remember whether there was an appropriate local detour for smaller vehicles --- if the slide was in the parkland around the state line, there may not have been.

Kind of the opposite of the situation you asked about, but perhaps interesting anyway.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 9:37 PM on August 11, 2013

A friend of mine took this road to get to a weekend concert on her GPS's advice. Her GPS was wrong. That's an extremely twisty colonization road where you have to slow down to 40 km/h every kilometer or so to take a sharp turn. This route, built later and all straightened out, is the quickest way to Notre-Dame-du-Laus.
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 9:01 AM on August 12, 2013