Don't know about boats on GPS auto-pilot colliding, but planes have. In 2006 a 737 collided with a private jet in Brazil. The private plane lost wing tips but managed to land. The airliner crashed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/03/business/03road.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 The cause was eventually determined to be two planes on opposite headings both on auto-pilot between the same way points. The pilots were criminally charged in Brazil, but were allowed to leave the country. Planes are normally "stacked" on odd or even thousand feet, depending on if they are traveling east or west (I am also a pilot). The Brazilian ATC should have moved the plane to a different altitude when it passed the last way point and a course change took it from slightly easterly course to a slightly westerly course. The ATC did not order the altitude change, and the pilots did not ask. Interestingly, the plane had a NY Times correspondent on board writing a story about a private plane delivery. This provides a unique perspective to the article. Chuck C&C24 Message: 8 Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2014 13:00:40 -0500 From: "Marek Dziedzic" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Subject: Re: Stus-List Autohelm St4000 how it should work with the GPS Message-ID: <BLU177- [email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Supposedly, this is how accidents happen on Great Lakes. I don?t know if these are urban legends or not, but I heard that, especially, on Georgian Bay, there are accidents of boats colliding, because two skippers enter the route based on buoys as waypoints and since the autopilots plus chartplotters are so accurate, the boats travel on the same trajectory (course). People assume that you can enter the course (route) and go down to entertain the guests. The chartplotter should alert you, when you approach the destination. Marek
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