GPS Takes Woman 900 Miles In The Wrong Direction

The woman in question

A 67 year old woman from Belgium drove for two days, and over 900 miles in the wrong direction, ending up in Zagreb, Croatia, before she noticed something was wrong. What’s worse is that her intended destination was only about 90 miles away from her home. Faulty GPS directions, along with a lack of attention, were the culprits.
I was distracted, so I kept driving. I saw all kinds of traffic signs, first in French, then German and finally in Croatian, but I kept driving because I was distracted. Suddenly I appeared in Zagreb and I realized I wasn’t in Belgium anymore.

A lack of common sense as well, we think, might have also played a big part in this. It’s a somewhat timely story, especially in the wake of Apple Maps’ now infamous life-threatening erroneous GPS coordinates, a story which once again adds fuel to the conversation over how much reliance we should place on our electronics. We believe in using… your darn head! However that’s such a subjective and variable skill that it’s hard to know where to draw the line. In the Apple Maps case, where a remote town in Autralia was erroneously located in the middle of a potentially dangerous national park, we felt as though Apple was at fault; after all, how was an unfamiliar traveler to know Mildura (the town in question) was not where the map said it was. However in this case, the woman knew she was supposed to stay in Belgium. Surely someone who was more alert would have noticed they were suddenly in Germany… and then in Austria, before being surprised to find themselves in Croatia!

Regardless of where you stand on where the onus of accuracy falls, it’s good to see these stories pop up now and then, since they serve as reminders that if you do something stupid (like over-rely on your GPS), you might end up plastered all over the Internet in shame.