A 67-year-old Belgian woman set out to drive 38 miles to Brussels under the guidance of her GPS navigation system but arrived in Zagreb two days and 901 miles later.
Being out by only five countries: that’s pretty good.
Put not your trust in machines
January 14th, 2013 · 9 Comments
Tags: Current Affairs
9 responses so far ↓
1 bloke in spain // Jan 14, 2013 at 7:38 am
Don’t know about anyone else but I’ve got some doubts about this story. OK. Got to confess once drove 75km along a route from close to Bordeaux to some village east of Paris because I hit the wrong département on the placename screen on a local trip, but 900 miles? Done a few journeys, that length & I’ve never had a satnav produce a route that long. Usually it’ll plot a route of sorts but you get an advisory message, saying the distance exceeds the memory capacity.
2 Emil // Jan 14, 2013 at 8:26 am
Or, do not allow 67 year old confused women to drive
3 Serf // Jan 14, 2013 at 9:20 am
As our university lecturers would say, does the result you calculated look right? Don’t just accept it .
After driving across a border or two and seeing signs in languages she was unfamiliar with, did she not start to worry?
Tim adds: Belgium has road signs in, in different areas, French, Dutch and also German. She didn’t meet a not spoken in Belgium language until she hit Slovenia. Which is pretty much (OK, Croatia) where she stopped.
4 Rob // Jan 14, 2013 at 10:56 am
That famous multi-tasking, eh?
5 Diogenes // Jan 14, 2013 at 10:58 am
Major roads in Belgium are well sign-posted, and most signs show a direction for Brussels/Bruxelles. Lack of such an indication should have informed the lady that she was driving in the wrong direction. Although many satnav users do tend to ignore road signs…
6 Diogenes // Jan 14, 2013 at 11:00 am
”
“I saw all kinds of traffic pass. First in French, then in Germany – Cologne, Aachen, Frankfurt … But I asked myself no questions,” she said.
“I was just distracted, so I kept my foot down.”
Mrs Moreau refuelled twice on her epic journey, caused a minor accident and slept a few hours behind the wheel on the side of the road. ”
What was she doing….knitting?
7 Blue Burmese // Jan 14, 2013 at 12:11 pm
The problem is not the sat-nav, it’s that the woman is fucking senile and should not be driving.
8 Agammamon // Jan 14, 2013 at 8:55 pm
Honestly, that seems more like operator failure than GPS failure.
9 Diogenes // Jan 14, 2013 at 9:58 pm
BIS – that is easily done in France where towns frequently have the same name – with a sur-river x or sous-mountain y identifier added. The old bint doesn’t even have that excuse.
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