The technology has been integrated into our lives on many levels. The tricky thing is realizing when it stops being an aid, or a tool, to she becomes the one who controls our actions.
A 27-year-old woman named Darian Aspinall had to travel from Queensland to Adelaide with her two children aged 2 and 4, and her 50-year-old mother. Are two Australian cities separated by 1,871 kilometers.
Queensland is in the north of Australia, and Adelaide in the south, so to travel from one to the other they had to cross through the center of the island, since going along the coast meant traveling almost 2,000 kilometers more. It was my first time doing the lake trip, so Darian Aspinall decided to trust Google Maps to guide him from road to road.
Everything went well until they reached the center of the country. Google Maps began to guide them through increasingly complicated dirt roadseven the SUV they were traveling in got stuck.
In that area of the country, almost uninhabited, there is no mobile coverage. So Darian Aspinall and his family couldn’t ask for help. Hours passed and his relatives began to worry, showing no signs of life.
The police mounted a major operation to locate the family. Two days later, a helicopter found a trapped car with two people asking for help waving their clothes. It was Darian and his family.
They had run out of water and food hours before, and they were deciding if they were going to get help on foot. But with two small children and no water, they decided to wait until they were located. It was a good decision.
The police verified that Google Maps had guided them on that path as it was the shortest route, but it does not mean that it is safe. Here you can see the route they took, in blue, and the one they should have taken, in grey.
The story reminds us of the Indian family who also blindly trusted Google Maps… and ended up at the bottom of a stream. They miraculously escaped.
Both adventures are a lesson to learn: technology should be a help, but it should never replace our common senseto the point of endangering our lives, and that of our family.
If you’re getting onto an impassable dirt road… don’t go any further. And if you fall with your car into a stream… Where were your eyes?
Technology helps us, but it should never replace our ability to control the situation.