How many people try to use the western (neighborhood) entrance to the Greenbelt Metro, not knowing that there's no parking lot there? Two to my certain knowledge, and I don't hang out at that corner. Some people try to follow the GPS app in their cell phones without really understanding where they're going. The app points them to the Metro all right, but if they should want to safely dispose of their $25,000 vehicles, — they will need to circle around for roughly two miles on either the Beltway or 193 to reach a parking lot.
An extremely well-known publication carried the same mistaken dependence a lot further recently. Its reporters used Google Earth to find addresses of certain buildings whose construction was supported by government funds. Google Earth showed vacant lots for some of those addresses and the famous publication told the world that there was waste and fraud involved.
Not so. Google Earth is not presently up to the task of giving exact locations for many street addresses. You use it for that purpose at your own risk. The actual buildings were a block or so away from the Google Earth sites.
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No acknowledgment of error from the media giant. This particular program helps poor people, so accuracy apparently doesn't matter.
But that's a digression. The main point is to be careful about depending on these devices. Sometimes you may need a real old-fashioned map.
