Apple Maps flaw results in drivers crossing airport runway

[jakeXT]

An Alaskan airport has closed an aircraft access route because of a flaw with Apple's Maps app.

Fairbanks International Airport told a local newspaper that in the past three weeks two motorists had driven along the taxiway and across one of its runways.

Apple's app directs users along the taxiway but does not specifically tell them to drive on to the runway.

...

She added that barricades had since been erected to block access to the final stretch of the taxiway and that they would not be removed until Apple had updated its directions.

...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24246646

[enlightenment]

1. Don't people look out their

windows anymore? Looking at the satellite images, I can see how you might get a bit confused, but you have to turn off the road (with the stripes) onto an aircraft access to even get to the taxiway (much less the runway).

Not quite as appalling as the people who drive into lakes and rivers because their turn-by-turn directions told them to . . . but close.

[Journeyman]

2. What did these people do in the era of paper maps? Believe the fold was the edge of the Earth?. . .

You just gotta look out your windows when using any type map, even if it's on a "smart" phone. You have just got to be smarter than what you're doing.

[Prometheus Perez]

3. Apple maps should be sued

That is dangerous.

[Alamuti Lotus]

5. is it really dangerous in itself?

I think anybody who would so blindly follow irrational orders from an inanimate object would manage to find themselves into any sort of trouble at a regular rate, the precise instrument of delivery being irrelevant.

[Glassunion]

7. No, whomever supplied the drivers licenses and vehicles to these idiots should be sued.

They are the real danger.

[snooper2]

10. how do you sue a map?

[Nuclear Unicorn]

4. She should also get that iPhone waterproofing app

[IronLionZion]

6. Apple maps' content is still very out of date

Even here in the DC area they have left out new roads and bridges that opened years ago. Google and mapquest have the new stuff. Apple and Bing don't.

[Phentex]

8. My friends have people show up at their house looking for Ikea...

all the time. It's a flaw on the app and people are also stupid at times.

[bluedeathray]

9. HEY! There's a Starbucks on the other side of that taxiway!

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Oh, and BTW, you are cleared to take off on runway 33.

[lpbk2713]

11. That bridge to nowhere must have caused a glitch.