Leave the Crow Flying to the Crows

hmmmmm

As much as technology has allowed us to make breakthroughs in scientific discovery, it’s main purpose is to make us lazy and to cause the cessation of brain use in humans. More specifically, technology has stopped people from walking (remote controls), conversing over a disagreed fact (google), and thinking (this lady).

A Massachusetts woman was lucky her cell phone caught a weak single for a minute or two Monday night when her compact car got stuck in a ditch after her GPS led her astray onto a snowmobile trail.

And we blame the GPS, not the person. Isn’t there an unwritten winter rule: “He who drives onto a snowmobile trail in something other than a snowmobile, is an imbecile?”

Lori Corderro’s GPS in her Toyota Yaris took her home through Brownfield, and was likely taking her to Interstate 95 via southern Oxford County at about 5 p.m. However, the system took the unfamiliar driver on Windsor Road, off Potato Hill Road. The road goes a short distance before becoming a snowmobile trail. “If you don’t exclude ‘dirt road,’ then the GPS will pick up the (worst) roads,” Deputy William Nelson said. Continuuing, “Typing the location into the GPS system and asking it to calculate the shortest distance leads unknowing travelers onto Patch Mountain Road, a discontinued road used by snowmobiles.”

Who on earth uses “shortest distance” when using GPS in their Toyota Yaris? Shouldn’t it always be “shortest time”? You should only be using “shortest distance” if you are a crow or are driving an Abrams tank. There are impediments on the ground that force us to circumvent them. Yes, the shortest distance between me and that tree is a straight line, but there is a prison in the way. My guess is that I should refrain from bowling through that barbed wire fence, and instead, go around.