4 ms·

On reading the article I had the same thought... I've driven (as a tourist in a hire car) up the road that they were ultimately trying to get to if they had mad

On reading the article I had the same thought... I've driven (as a tourist in a hire car) up the road that they were ultimately trying to get to if they had made it over the pass, heading round to the north of death valley and then down Badwater road on the eastern side of Death Valley. It didn't seem to be a stupid thing to do, we had lots of water in the car, we stuck to paved roads and although we probably only met one other car on the way north, once in death valley there was occasional traffic. There have been several times when I've set off down dirt tracks in unsuitable vehicles for a bit of an adventure, and so far haven't come unstuck, but it's always been in western europe and not somewhere like this. So maybe I'm just like the germans in this situation... But then I looked at the map and started scouting around at where they had decided to go... It may have been a couple of small decisions that led to disaster once they were up there, but the larger decision to head off up a 40 mile sandy/rocky dirt track to get over the very imposing mountains in the desert in July was the one that it was obvious (from my point of view) not to take.

brudgers 8y ago
Relative to Western Europe, everything from Los Angeles to Las Vegas is in the Mojave Desert. The desert is the size of Portugal. Death Valley National Park itself is an uninhabited region 1/3 the size of Switzerland. Even if it wasn't desert, and even if it wasn't mountainous, getting stranded there would be life threatening. But of course there are mountains and desert and heat. The root cause, to me, was normal complacency. Looking at a map and not taking the words "Death Valley" seriously. Seeing 500km from Los Angeles to Las Vegas and planning like it's Berlin to Munich. Everything else in the tragedy stems from that. We all do it. Looking at the bottle with a skull and crossbones and doubting it's seriousness because day to day our lives don't include bottles of poison. We're conditioned assume Death Valley is ironic branding by a tourist board based our everyday media experience. Interpreting the tragedy as a series of small mistakes is attractive. But the article's story is all about not making the fundamental mistake of taking Death Valley lightly...and even then it's full of near disasters where the experienced search and rescue operators almost take it too lightly and come closer to the envelope than intended simply because 99% reliable isn't 100%, because of the weather, and because there's no one around.
erentz 8y ago
> It didn't seem to be a stupid thing...we stuck to paved roads It doesn't sound like you did anything stupid. You didn't go even remotely close to where the German's went in this case. They went into areas on roads that nobody would normally tackle without a serious 4x4 and a backup plan. They went down the westside unpaved road up to Warm Springs Camp and the Geologists Stone Cabin. The thing reading it that surprised me is that they tried this in a station wagon, not a 4x4, and never got the sense to turn around, and then from the Stone Cabin they went waaaay into serious offroad territory trying to drive down the wash. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1FdGZI6DDRPe3Y9-dtpLGGtDr2pQ&usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/open?id=1FdGZI6DDRPe3Y9-dtpLGGtDr2p...
- bitL 8y ago
  That's pretty normal for Europeans. 4x4 are rare and roads are often in worse conditions in mountainous areas that even some Fiat Punto can climb without any major issues. Most US folks would freak out without a proper Explorer or similar. It's like when in Germany you regularly see females driving 130MPH on the highway on their way back from shopping; it would freak you out but it's totally fine over there. So my guess is that those Germans just took it as a typical overcautious American thing and did it the same way they would do it in Austrian Alps or Canary Islands. Their main mistake was not to turn back, but again, moving forward and extreme resilience to pain is one of their national attributes anyway.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - pthreadses 8y ago
    This is not at all my experience. I'm an American living in Germany who pretty regularly goes to the Alps, the roads are nothing remarkable. The amount of infrastructure built in the Alps is remarkable, but Americans are not going to bat an eye at the road conditions in the mountains of Europe, nor are they comparable to what people are talking about here.
    - bitL 8y ago
KorematsuFred 8y ago
Death Valley has over 600 miles of off road track which are meant for 4x4 vehicles. Of course these people could have stuck to paved roads and stayed safe but I think they underestimated what off road truly is. Driving off road is an American cultural thing and roads and deliberately maintained for those enthusiasts. These were not the first Europeans to underestimate driving in USA.

brudgers 8y ago

Relative to Western Europe, everything from Los Angeles to Las Vegas is in the Mojave Desert. The desert is the size of Portugal. Death Valley National Park itself is an uninhabited region 1/3 the size of Switzerland. Even if it wasn't desert, and even if it wasn't mountainous, getting stranded there would be life threatening. But of course there are mountains and desert and heat. The root cause, to me, was normal complacency. Looking at a map and not taking the words "Death Valley" seriously. Seeing 500km from Los Angeles to Las Vegas and planning like it's Berlin to Munich. Everything else in the tragedy stems from that. We all do it. Looking at the bottle with a skull and crossbones and doubting it's seriousness because day to day our lives don't include bottles of poison. We're conditioned assume Death Valley is ironic branding by a tourist board based our everyday media experience. Interpreting the tragedy as a series of small mistakes is attractive. But the article's story is all about not making the fundamental mistake of taking Death Valley lightly...and even then it's full of near disasters where the experienced search and rescue operators almost take it too lightly and come closer to the envelope than intended simply because 99% reliable isn't 100%, because of the weather, and because there's no one around.

erentz 8y ago

> It didn't seem to be a stupid thing...we stuck to paved roads It doesn't sound like you did anything stupid. You didn't go even remotely close to where the German's went in this case. They went into areas on roads that nobody would normally tackle without a serious 4x4 and a backup plan. They went down the westside unpaved road up to Warm Springs Camp and the Geologists Stone Cabin. The thing reading it that surprised me is that they tried this in a station wagon, not a 4x4, and never got the sense to turn around, and then from the Stone Cabin they went waaaay into serious offroad territory trying to drive down the wash. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1FdGZI6DDRPe3Y9-dtpLGGtDr2pQ&usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/open?id=1FdGZI6DDRPe3Y9-dtpLGGtDr2p...

bitL 8y ago
That's pretty normal for Europeans. 4x4 are rare and roads are often in worse conditions in mountainous areas that even some Fiat Punto can climb without any major issues. Most US folks would freak out without a proper Explorer or similar. It's like when in Germany you regularly see females driving 130MPH on the highway on their way back from shopping; it would freak you out but it's totally fine over there. So my guess is that those Germans just took it as a typical overcautious American thing and did it the same way they would do it in Austrian Alps or Canary Islands. Their main mistake was not to turn back, but again, moving forward and extreme resilience to pain is one of their national attributes anyway.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- pthreadses 8y ago
  This is not at all my experience. I'm an American living in Germany who pretty regularly goes to the Alps, the roads are nothing remarkable. The amount of infrastructure built in the Alps is remarkable, but Americans are not going to bat an eye at the road conditions in the mountains of Europe, nor are they comparable to what people are talking about here.
  - bitL 8y ago

KorematsuFred 8y ago

Death Valley has over 600 miles of off road track which are meant for 4x4 vehicles. Of course these people could have stuck to paved roads and stayed safe but I think they underestimated what off road truly is. Driving off road is an American cultural thing and roads and deliberately maintained for those enthusiasts. These were not the first Europeans to underestimate driving in USA.