Car on the W&OD

[Steve O]

On my way home from WTF Coffee Club this morning I encountered this car traveling southeast on the W&OD, about 1/2 mile northwest of Columbia Pike:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]15636[/ATTACH]

The driver, an older Asian woman, had two children with her in the back seat (I’m guessing she was likely either a grandmother or caregiver). She told me she had no idea how she got on the trail, that she was just following her GPS. She was also clearly flustered. I wish I had probed more to try to determine where she could have entered. It had to have been south of Wilson somewhere, because I find it highly unlikely anyone would drive under Wilson Blvd on the trail when a clear and easy escape route is so visible. (However, people can be surprisingly stupid.)

She said she was from Chicago and unfamiliar with the area.

I told her to drive very slowly about 1/2 mile to a street and then turn right, but only on the walk signal. Hopefully she followed those instructions.

I wish I had also instructed her to call the State of Illinois (or wherever her license is issued) and ask them to rescind her driver’s license. Although one may claim this is a “simple mistake,” it actually must be really hard to do, given the millions of cars that pass beside the trails and do not drive onto them–including almost everyone who is from out of town.

Anyone who is so clueless or oblivious or unable to safely operate their vehicle should not be allowed to drive, IMO.

Topic

[TwoWheelsDC]

@Steve O 167045 wrote:

She told me she had no idea how she got on the trail, that she was just following her GPS.

This part is at least plausible and somewhat of a “bug” in Google Maps (assuming she was using that and not a dedicated vehicle GPS), as it can be easy to mistakenly get walking/biking directions if you aren’t paying attention…that last bit is important though. You have to be inattentive to make that mistake. You have to even more inattentive to make the turn onto a trail…and you have to be totally incompetent to **keep driving** along a trail that is so obviously not a road.

[huskerdont]

So this is just past the wetland overlook. There is a little road that goes into Glenncarlyn Park and ends at a small parking lot. (The map says it’s a trail, but you can see the parking lot it goes to.) After that there is a low-water bridge that, I think, used to have a seemingly useless bollard but no longer does. This is likely how she got on the trail since it’s just northwest of that overlook. Considering the driving skills shown, she’s quite lucky she didn’t end up in Four Mile Run while going over the low-water bridge.

https://www.google.com/maps/@38.8639139,-77.1188059,131m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en

[Emm]

@TwoWheelsDC 167048 wrote:

This part is at least plausible and somewhat of a “bug” in Google Maps (assuming she was using that and not a dedicated vehicle GPS), as it can be easy to mistakenly get walking/biking directions if you aren’t paying attention…that last bit is important though.

My Lyft driver a few weeks ago actually did this when I was coming home from the airport, and I had to take his phone and move it off bike directions into car directions. There was a language barrier which wasn’t helping the situation, especially as he drove at a somewhat high speed around the airport. But even he realized something was totally wrong, he just couldn’t figure out what.

I have used garmin, waze, google and apple maps, and NEVER been directed onto a bike/pedestrian trail unless I specifically hit bike directions in google. I use gps almost every time I drive for traffic info so if directing people onto local trails was a real issue around here, I’d have likely noticed it by now. I think it’s just an excuse people give when they make a wrong turn. The few times google defaulted to bike directions it was incredibly obvious since the map and time-to-destination made no sense in a car.

[lordofthemark]

@Emm 167053 wrote:

My Lyft driver a few weeks ago actually did this when I was coming home from the airport, and I had to take his phone and move it off bike directions into car directions. There was a language barrier which wasn’t helping the situation, especially as he drove at a somewhat high speed around the airport. But even he realized something was totally wrong, he just couldn’t figure out what.

I have used garmin, waze, google and apple maps, and NEVER been directed onto a bike/pedestrian trail unless I specifically hit bike directions in google. I use gps almost every time I drive for traffic info so if directing people onto local trails was a real issue around here, I’d have likely noticed it by now. I think it’s just an excuse people give when they make a wrong turn. The few times google defaulted to bike directions it was incredibly obvious since the map and time-to-destination made no sense in a car.

QOTM: So, what is our expected time to arrival? If we are going to be late, you should text our host.
LOTM: It should take us 6 days and 15 hours. Oh wait, sorry, I didn’t change this from my ride yesterday.

[VA2DC]

@huskerdont 167051 wrote:

So this is just past the wetland overlook. There is a little road that goes into Glenncarlyn Park and ends at a small parking lot. (The map says it’s a trail, but you can see the parking lot it goes to.) After that there is a low-water bridge that, I think, used to have a seemingly useless bollard but no longer does. This is likely how she got on the trail since it’s just northwest of that overlook. Considering the driving skills shown, she’s quite lucky she didn’t end up in Four Mile Run while going over the low-water bridge.

https://www.google.com/maps/@38.8639139,-77.1188059,131m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en

That’s a good guess, but I’m voting for the steep hairpin trail coming off of the end of N Greenbrier St to a left directly onto the W&OD. :confused:

https://www.google.com/maps/@38.8668212,-77.1239251,278a,35y,184.5h/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en

In any case, it took some concerted maneuvering for her to get on the trail.

[Judd]

@Steve O 167045 wrote:

On my way home from WTF Coffee Club this morning I encountered this car traveling southeast on the W&OD, about 1/2 mile northwest of Columbia Pike:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]15636[/ATTACH]

She said she was from Chicago and unfamiliar with the area.

I highly doubt anyone from Illinois would ever do this. Looks like fake news to me.

[accordioneur]

@Steve O 167045 wrote:

Anyone who is so clueless or oblivious or unable to safely operate their vehicle should not be allowed to drive, IMO.

But think of how many QOM’s she picked up!

[n18]

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[Vicegrip]

@n18 167067 wrote:

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Oh no! Please don’t post 3 bollards in a row. That is like saying “Betelgeuse” three times.

[dkel]

Last night on my eastbound trip on the W&OD, as I was waiting at the Maple Ave crossing in Vienna, a car made a sharp left off of Maple, and came zooming up next to me on the trail. I managed to get the driver’s attention, and the driver rolled down the window and said, “this isn’t a road, is it.” Apparently it was another GPS incident; in this case I suspect the driver just misunderstood the verbal instruction to turn, and jumped the gun: the actual turn was only about half a block beyond the trail entrance. Perhaps the strangest thing was that the car then did a sharp right, and gunned it up the sidewalk to get to the intended street!

[jabberwocky]

That used to be part of my daily commute and I’d see cars make that turn on a semi regular basis. There was one guy who seemed to use it as a shortcut over to Church when traffic on Maple got too heavy for his liking.

My other complaint was that drivers often didn’t notice/deliberately ignored that light. First time I was ever hit by a car was crossing there when someone sitting in traffic didn’t notice the light had changed and gunned it through a red light as I was riding across.

[huskerdont]

Further to SteveO’s post on the woman driving on the W&OD, I rode by there yesterday. Below is the low-water bridge. Note the sign saying not to block the gate, but there’s no gate there anymore, nor a bollard. It’s a simple uphill drive to the trail from there, or, if one prefers, one can drive right to the playground to pick up one’s kids, then drive up at the next access point.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]15665[/ATTACH]

At the other end of the parking lot, there is a bollard:

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Probably is no bollard at the low-water bridge so that maintenance vehicles can get to the playground.

[Author]

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