Speed

[Tom Kunich]

Lou, different bike with different speed and cadence sensors:

103 rpm
Max Bike Cadence
59.1 mph
Max Speed

I'm not sure where on the hills this occurred but it wasn't the steepest and longest section. There is a fairly smooth downhill between one climb and the next on the return trip and the speed gets high enough to make you nervous. So on Palomares which is much steeper and longer descent having a top speed over 60 mph wouldn't seem unusual. And although there are some bad parts of the pavement, I know where they all are and can avoid them. If I'm correct at where this speed was achieved it was either on the way out or on the way back in this section and it has very good road here.

[Lou Holtman]

I see a max speed of 59.7 km/hr on your ride yesterday. Do you have your units set correctly? 60 mph is possible but very very unusual for a 78 yo on a ride with a 97 m of elevation gain.

Lou

[Tom Kunich]

I am copying that directly off of the Garmin report so the units have to be correct. I only convert mph to kph and back on my calculator so it is never set to record in kph.

[Lou Holtman]

https://www.strava.com/activities/7938074028/overview

Lou

[AMuzi]

Those systems are completely reliable:
https://nypost.com/2022/10/09/north-carolina-man-phillip-paxson-dead-after-following-gps-to-destroyed-bridge-that-dropped-into-water/

--
Andrew Muzi
<www.yellowjersey.org/>
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

[Catrike Rider]

It apparently wasn't the GPS that failed.

[Tom Kunich]

Well, there is a difference in a GPS tracking your ride and the same GPS using MAPS to give you a route. I'm certainly not afraid to say when I made a mistake but there were no cars or freeways involved in that 60+ mph report. I am perfectly happy to accept Lou's belief that I had some sort of glitch and that was a false speed. But next time I do that ride I will again check my speeds. I intended to do it today but the forecast was for 25 mph winds and 60 degree temperatures. If I didn't like it by the time I got to Niles Canyon I would have turned back. But fighting back into a 25 mph headwind isn't all that much fun either.

[John B.]

A few days ago he was reporting a max speed of 87 mph (or was it 78).
You obviously don't understand how powerful Tommy really is.... at
least in his own imagination.

--
Cheers,

John B.

[AMuzi]

Right.
GPS is one component of a system (which includes the pilot)

[Frank Krygowski]

Michael Scott once had a problem with that system.

https://www.facebook.com/nbc/videos/michael-drives-into-lake-scranton-the-office/223145115752008/

--
- Frank Krygowski

[John B.]

On Sun, 09 Oct 2022 15:40:51 -0500, AMuzi <a...@yellowjersey.org> wrote:

Gee, and the bridge had only been broken for 9 years or so (:-)
--
Cheers,

John B.

[Jeff Liebermann]

Are you suggesting that it's the fault of the GPS? The article makes
it sound that it was the fault of the GPS because the driver
presumably trusted his GPS.

Is that like a marine navigator or a pilot learning to trust their
instruments?
<https://www.google.com/search?q=navigator+pilot+trust+your+instruments>

This article offers a more specific location:
"Bridge where Hickory man died Friday washed out in 2013. Barricade
had blown into the creek."
<https://statesville.com/news/state-and-regional/bridge-where-hickory-man-died-friday-washed-out-in-2013-barricade-had-blown-into-the/article_7a3aeac1-b930-5a01-95ba-35b86c8016f8.html>
"...which ran off of a collapsed bridge on 24th Street Place
Northeast, in the northern part of the city, around 11 p.m. Friday"
and
<https://statesville.com/news/state-and-regional/man-found-dead-in-jeep-that-overturned-in-hickory-creek-friday-night-trooper-says/article_0a3c0c1a-039f-5958-9df2-5194016e5e64.html>
Kinda looks like he hit the windshield. Not using seat belts perhaps?
Is that one of those black pickup trucks we were previously
discussing?

The closed bridge is clearly marked on Google Maps:
<https://goo.gl/maps/XA1kkHHETs7Z6igE6>
Click on the "-" icon and it optimistically predicts: "Closed until
Mar 2023". If you zoom in on the satellite view, you can see Snow
Creek under the tree canopy.

I don't know what went wrong, but the lack of barriers and warning
lights seems like a good start.

In marine navigation and flying, the USCG and FAA take great care to
inform mariners and aviators of any hazards. The various highway
departments attempt to do the same. For example, this one of several
road closure traffic advisor pages for my area:
<https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f637a4d84946edbb5aab283766c9de/>
(It's nearly useless, but better than nothing).

For North Carolina:
<https://drivenc.gov/#incidents>
I couldn't find the bridge on their map.

The vehicle was a 2020 Jeep Gladiator, which comes with GPS built into
the console. Looks like it had traffic information with clunky map
updates via USB. It probably included long term road closures:
<https://youtu.be/Fao6DmFmdUI?t=193>
Was he using the navigation system? At 11pm in a rainy night, he was
probably paying more attention to his driving than the GPS.

I don't want to get into the usual "what if" or assignment of the
blame discussion.


--
Jeff Liebermann je...@cruzio.com
PO Box 272 http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Ben Lomond CA 95005-0272
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

[John B.]

On Sun, 09 Oct 2022 18:40:45 -0700, Jeff Liebermann <je...@cruzio.com>

We just drove back from Bangkok - about a 200 km, 2 hour, trip in
normal traffic but it is a holiday weekend so heavy traffic, Anyway, I
turned my hand phone GPS mapping utility on - OSMAND - and set it to
navigate. Which it turned out was very similar to the car navigation
system. It was quite noticeable that the GPS navigator system kept to
the "major roads" and ignored a number of short cuts which weren't
some sort of narrow, hidden, path but 4 lane highways built to allow
through traffic to avoid towns and other congested portions of the
route.

So, yes GPS will get you there but it doesn't replace an experienced
driver (:-)
--
Cheers,

John B.

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Sun, 9 Oct 2022 14:08:00 -0700 (PDT), Tom Kunich
<cycl...@gmail.com> wrote:

>I'm certainly not afraid to say when I made a mistake

Ok. Say that you made a mistake.

>but there were no cars or freeways involved in that
>60+ mph report.

What you forgot to do was a sanity check. You should be able to
estimate the approximate speed to insure that you didn't fumble the
keys on your calculator or buttons on your abacus.

I don't know if you're using mph or kmh, but you did the conversion
wrong. Here's how I like to do conversions:

- Start your Chrome browser.
- Go to <https://www.google.com>
- Inscribe into the search box or yell into the microphone:
"convert 59.7 kmh to mph"
- It will produce 37.09586 mph

If you don't like using Google, there are a variety of unit conversion
extensions, apps, and stand alone programs, which do much the same
thing. I like this one for Windoze:
<https://joshmadison.com/convert-for-windows/>

[Frank Krygowski]

On 10/9/2022 10:06 PM, John B. wrote:
>
>
> We just drove back from Bangkok - about a 200 km, 2 hour, trip in
> normal traffic but it is a holiday weekend so heavy traffic, Anyway, I
> turned my hand phone GPS mapping utility on - OSMAND - and set it to
> navigate. Which it turned out was very similar to the car navigation
> system. It was quite noticeable that the GPS navigator system kept to
> the "major roads" and ignored a number of short cuts which weren't
> some sort of narrow, hidden, path but 4 lane highways built to allow
> through traffic to avoid towns and other congested portions of the
> route.
>
> So, yes GPS will get you there but it doesn't replace an experienced
> driver (:-)

I remember one trip (I think it was New Brunswick, Canada) where my wife
was driving as we followed a coast road. At a certain point the GPS
tried to tell us to turn off onto a gravel road. It made no sense to me,
since I could see by the paper map that little road rejoined our highway
a little way on. I told my wife to stick to the highway and we soon saw
the other end of that gravel road descending back to the the highway. It
would have been a difficult and useless "short cut" that took much longer.

We later mentioned it to locals. They said "Oh yes, GPS doesn't work up
here."

I assume they really meant that the programmers of the GPS devices don't
bother to update the built-in maps, probably because there are too few
potential customers.

--
- Frank Krygowski