"Come to think of it, you can't get theah from heah..."

reminds me of an episode... from my village you can see the Stuttgart Television Tower from many perspectives, towering over the surrounding forest. so, one day a car stopped by me, and asked for directions (this was way before everybody had navigation devices or apps). you could see the tower's head in full glory between the houses from that spot. so I started, "turn right next corner and left, then..." - "That's the very wrong direction!" the driver yelled and drove on towards the tower and into the village which I knew would get him lost... never heard from him again.

The clip I linked is at least 50 years old (it's an LP recording). Heck, Marshall Dodge died 40 years ago in 1982. The first time my brother and I drove to Maine (a very strange state of affairs) we made the mistake of asking locals for directions. Don't do that. When I went back 20 years later I went with a girlfriend whose mother lived there, so she was familiar with the area. I had also learned to read state travel maps!

asking locals can be tricky if they are for example, only pedestrians. you look for other details that someone behind a wheel. also, locals know that that narrow road is named whatever ave., while you might think it's some stomped pathway...

elderly people in swabia and other parts of southern germany have a nasty tendency to name things different than the officials; not out of spite, it just how they talk with each other. if you cone even as far as from next village, you might get lost in local names...

interestingly enough, here not only the main roads have names, but also those narrow agricultural roads that barely leave enough room for a tractor... because they used to be frequented roads in ancient times. it's fun to read local maps and see funky names with some tidbit of history behind them.

I actually have a convergent problem here. Some GPS devices (looking at you, TomTom and Magellan) use an old, 1948 Rand-McNally Road Atlas to map my area. I kid you not. Not only does it fail to show roads that have been there for decades, it insists that long closed roads are not only open but are the best way to get from here to there.

As I've often said, I live on a dead-end dirt road on top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere. The last car to bass through the brush at the end and drive out the other side was a 1970 VW Beetle, and I know this because I drove it. A few days later, the wind dropped a tree across the road and my neighbor later dumped some excess gravel next to it, effectively closing the end of the road. That was 1979; may digital resources still show it open. About once a month, I get an irate driver such as a Soccer Mom in her mini van all upset with me because her GPS proves the road is open! I feel sorry for the 18-wheeler drivers who drive down here and have to back out, because there's nowhere to turn around. Buy a better GPS that's not programmed from a 75-year-old atlas!

Nearby, a town meeting closed the road past the old meetinghouse due to flooding -- in 1929. An AT&T Long Distance connection still goes down there, but they don't need to go past the few scraps of rotten lumber lying in the river -- all that remains of the bridge. Fortunately, there are gates over both ends, but I still see people fuming because "Someone closed the road!"

here, navigation maps divide between pedestrian, caqr, and truck. the latter cost a lot extra, but include bridge height and weight restrictions (aka "the bridge that eats trucks"), as well as too narrow roads, known in germany as country roads of third order. those are usually narrow strips of macadam barely allowing a large tractor. since shipping companies are cheapskates they provide their truck drivers with the cheapest car systems we have a source of "fail" videos. actually the driver is the least responsible in this; but, there. on the other hand it's amazing what some of these drivers display in driving skills comign out of the woods unscathed, quite literally, because gtheir navigator showed that joke-for-a-road as a viable shortcut for a 40ton rig...
there are also two or three bridges in remote places that have been replaced by ferries, which even google maps don't show correctly, and somehow the warning sign showing a vehicle rolling off into the water doesn't mean anything, navi says there is a bridge...

a friend is using a navigation system that updates daily. users would put in obstacles like construction sites, and when the third one has put in the same info it becomes canon, until called off. it also shows traffic jams and such. I don't know how large the map is, my guess is central europe. but really, can't have a map any more actual than that.

A crowd-supported 'wiki' map makes a lot of sense, The only problem with that kind of data generation is the same thing that Wikipedia ran into a few years ago. One incident comes to mind; a pretty poor artist wanted the world to know how wonderful he was, so he created an article on Wikipedia. I won't bother with the whole drama, but first her tried to hack the site, and when he failed at that, he tried to bribe a hacker to mess with it. He has attempted a number of things to get his name in lights, as it were, but I'll let you poke around.

oh my. but, there is always someone who is looking for the shortcut to fame&success.

Or in his case, infamy and obsession...

even worse.

Never trust the locals........ they might have other things on their mind after seeing your equipment. *Smirks*

aka, "You and your stupid shortcuts!" :)

Yep, that about sums it up. :)