In fact, police in the southeastern Australian state of Victoria says that they had to rescue several passengers who were stuck for up to 24 hours without food and water in remote parts of the Murray Sunset National Park, instead of the tourist town of Mildura, which is located 70 kilometers away! According to police data, at least six vehicles ended up on remote roads in the national park after they were guided by the navigation system in iOS to turn off the main road. All were fortunately saved, but police warned that extremely hot days with temperatures higher than 46 degrees Celsius are coming and that passengers in the oppressive heat and out of range of a cellular network signals were in big trouble. They cite a traveler who was stuck in a national park on Friday and saw a snake, a goat and a fox, and since he was too scared he did not dared to leave his vehicle [I can understand being cautious of the snake, but I am not sure about the fox and goat… - Ed].

Police also said that passengers should not blindly trust any navigation system. Anyone who has used one knows that sometimes they make mistakes, but they also noted that it's easy to get lost in the 377 kilometer long highway that is very poorly marked. One short anecdote about my experience with iPhone 4S navigation, during one bus trip, the navigation suggested to take a shortcut and to turn left on some unknown road, the thing was that there was no road, just a hill and a cemetery, well I guess that's better than wild animals at least.

[Ed – Although Apple’s map app is probably the worst that I have worked with, you should always be careful with the instructions that you get from any navigation device. The unfortunate part is that more and more people are relying on their technology for not only navigation, but the answers to questions and even relationship advice (yes in some extreme cases). What people need to remember is that many of these systems require cell service to operate properly; you might have offline maps, but too many phones need connectivity simply because their “GPS” is not good enough to maintain accuracy.]


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