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Are We Lost Yet?
US News & World Report · August 12, 2002

It's one thing to lose yourself on vacation. It's quite another to get lost, as Jennifer Johannessen discovered on a road trip from New York to Boston. Dot-com directions and the atlas couldn't keep up with the Big Dig, a $12.6 billion expressway project that's turned Boston into an often confusing construction site. Trying to reach the USS Constitution in the city's harbor, Johannessen found herself on a maddening 45-minute odyssey along Route 93. "None of the exits were clearly marked," she remembers. Finally a ranger at the Bunker Hill Monument told her to follow the Freedom Trail–a red line linking 16 historic sites from there to the ship.

This summer is shaping up as the busiest ever for vacation road trips. A record number of vacationers will probably get lost, too. Drivers have grown dependent on iffy online directions, inaccurate maps, and inadequate onboard navigational systems.

Daniel Howard, an expert on consumer behavior and chairman of Southern Methodist University's marketing department, believes our mass confusion originated with the online mapping Web sites in the mid-1990s. Drivers started to trust computer-generated directions over an atlas or even a knowledgeable person. When one contradicted the other, they'd obey the machine. "People believe computers do not make mistakes," he says. "But they do."

And how. There's abundant anecdotal evidence that the navigational systems are often ineffective–if not downright misleading. Online directions often tell you to drive up one-way roads, along impassable canals, or down unnamed streets. Navigational systems installed in many luxury cars and rental vehicles are frequently no better. "Navigational systems sometimes fail to provide warning of upcoming turns until you've passed them" or they're incomplete, says Chris Wardlaw, a senior editor for the car-review site Edmunds.com.

The typical male, meanwhile, is too stubborn to ask the best source–local folks. Only 1 in 5 travelers turns to gas station or convenience store clerks, according a new Avis poll of 1,000 families. The chamber of commerce is another underrated resource. A U.S. News reporter driving from Montreal to Bar Harbor, Maine, called and got a route that shaved two hours off both MapQuest and AAA directions–plus a great restaurant recommendation.

Then again, even the chamber of commerce might inadvertently steer you wrong. Pittsburgher Michele Baum consulted a chamber of commerce brochure to find her way from Virginia Beach back to Interstate 64. "It was like a bad Twilight Zone episode," she says of her wanderings. The minimap wasn't intended for navigation, says a chamber spokeswoman.

But in an age of electronic directions, drivers may no longer realize the difference between a stylized map and the real thing, like Rand McNally's atlases. Nor do they seem to understand that MapQuest has no aesthetic. Ask for the best route from Los Angeles to San Francisco and you'll be sent up I-5, a boring series of straightaways through the Central Valley. It's efficient, but you'll miss the picturesque Pacific Coast Highway.

Technology could come to the rescue. Consider what New Yorker Jack Myers did when his map and computerized driving directions failed him. "I hit a construction site on the Saw Mill Parkway on my way to White Plains," he says. "I couldn't figure out how to get around it." Luckily, Myers had subscribed to a $19.95 monthly "411" service called Pronto that offers turn-by-turn directions from a human operator. In less than a minute, an operator figured out a way around the road work. Imagine that–all it takes to get a guy to ask for directions is a cellphone.

Christopher Elliott is a travel commentator based in Annapolis, Md. All e-mailed questions may be edited, condensed or republished at the site's discretion.