In an episode of The Office, branch manager Michael follows directions from his GPS device — despite the warnings of his passenger — and drives his car into a lake.
That turns out to be art imitating life. These things actually seem to happen fairly often.
For some reason, most of them occur in Great Britain. It’s gotten so bad there that signs have been put up telling drivers to ignore their “sat nav” directions and not go any further down certain roads.
The Mail on Sunday reported it in an article titled First ‘ignore your sat nav’ roadsigns go up.
The article says: “Owing to a fault in the electronic information system, many drivers are sent through the Hampshire hamlet only to find the lane narrows to 6ft and they get stuck. A nearby propery owner who had to keep repairing damage from trucks getting stuck and having to back up, said ‘When I’ve asked drivers why they are using the lane they say they are just following satnav.’ ”
Sat nav driver’s car hit by train was the headline of a BBC News story that reported that “A 20-year-old student’s car was wrecked by a train after she followed her sat nav system onto a railway track.” She was quoted as saying “I put my complete trust in the sat nav and it led me right into the path of a speeding train.”
That wasn’t the only train incident. A widely reported accident in New York state involved an out-of-town man in a rental car “who said he was merely trusting his car’s global positioning system when he steered onto the tracks.” The man got stuck on the tracks and managed to get out of his car and try to warn an oncoming train, but the train couldn’t stop and totaled the car. You can read the article Driver cited in Bedford train-car crash caused by GPS mishap on LoHud.com.
BBC News reported “Drivers following satellite navigation systems through a village called Crackpot have been directed along a track at the edge of a 100ft cliff” in an article titled Drivers on edge over cliff route.
The Times Online published an article titled Sat-nav dunks dozy drivers in deep water.
It states: “There is a lucrative new sport in the Wiltshire village of Luckington: fishing stranded motorists out of a ford at £25 a time.
“Since a road closure, dozens of drivers have blithely followed directions from their satellite navigation systems, not realising that the recommended route goes through the ford.” The article states warning signs were posted and the water was clearly visible.
“We’ve heard some very hilarious stories where people just blindly follow the sat nav instructions,” said Vince Yearley, a spokesman for the Institute of Advanced Motorists, using British shorthand for “satellite navigation.” “Like if the sat nav says, ‘Drive into this muddy field,’ they think, ‘That’s weird,’ but they do it anyway.”
Source: Computerworld Blogs
