GPS navigation is one of the single greatest advancements in driving technology in the past 30 years. Before GPS, people had to print out turn-by-turn directions from their computer from MapQuest and reference them constantly throughout their drives. Before that, it was good old-fashioned paper maps and road signs.
But thanks to the power of satellite-based global positioning systems, getting to a faraway place you’ve never been before is as easy as pressing a few buttons on your phone. Punch in the name of a location or an address, and you’re fed all the directions in a matter of seconds, even if that place is thousands of miles away.
But even decades into the era of sat nav, it’s not perfect. From time to time, I’ve had my GPS take me down a wrong turn or to a closed road, or a path that didn’t exist at all. It’s pretty rare that it happens, but it still does happen.
There’s one distinct instance of a GPS route screwing me over that I’ll never forget. It was either 2018 or 2019, and I, along with a couple of friends, was driving from New York City to Burlington, Vermont, to check out a Subaru Impreza 2.5RS listed for sale on Craigslist. Today, this car would probably be worth $10,000-$15,000—it was a two-door black coupe with a big wing and a manual transmission, and only surface rust underneath. But back then, it was worth no more than two grand (I think my friend paid $1,800 for it, and at the time, I thought he was overpaying).
On the way up to Vermont, we stayed on the New York side of Lake Champlain, driving up Interstate 87. As we approached Burlington, my GPS instructed me to head to the town of Essex and hop on the ferry to cross over the lake to get to Charlotte, Vermont, just south of Burlington. Seeing as how it was pretty late in the day by then, and the last Essex-to-Charlotte ferry had departed hours ago, this presented a problem. We had no immediate way to get across, so we had to double back about 40 minutes to cross the nearest bridge. Making things worse was that I was nearly out of gas, and there weren’t very many stations open up there at the time. It was a stressful situation.
Was it partially my fault for not examining the route before blindly following the directions? Yes, certainly. Had I known my GPS was instructing me to go to a ferry that wouldn’t be operating by the time I’d arrive there, I would’ve taken a different route. But also, I feel like there should be some kind of alert built in if the GPS is telling you to take a ferry crossing that isn’t operating 24/7. I don’t remember which app I was using, and this was nearly 10 years ago at this point. Those types of notifications may exist now, and I just haven’t come across one yet.
Either way, it wasn’t a fun time. Now it’s your turn to share. Has your GPS ever screwed you over? If so, how? What happened? Did you end up in a lake like Michael Scott? Please share your stories in the comments below.
Top graphic image: screengrab, NBC
In 2019 I went to Chile to see the solar eclipse. I was driving through the city of Valparaiso, Chile with my son navigating via Google maps. Much of Valparaiso is built on a hillside so the main streets tend to go along the mountain at a particular elevation while there are very narrow, steep streets going up and down.
My son directed me down a particular very steep, very narrow street where at one point I had to thread my way between a house and a Toyota pickup with about six inches to spare on either side. Shortly after carefully navigating that point I brought the (manual, and this is somewhat important) RAV4 to a halt. My son looked over at me and asked why I had stopped. I replied, “do you see the 10 foot drop right in front on us?”, a drop that was NOT evident in Google Maps. As there was no place to turn around I had to back all the way up the hill and thread the needle in reverse with a manual transmission. You could definitely smell clutch.
In the early days of the captive Hertz nav technology it really struggled with the narrow and close-set streets of Boston.
Most of the time it’s when it tries to get me to drive down a bike path or jump a curb between two roads that are this >< close together, but don’t actually connect.
However, I do have a fun(?) GPS fail story from when I was in Shanghai. Since China infamously doesn’t allow Google access in the country, Google Maps is not entirely reliable over there. In my case, I discovered that even with downloaded offline maps, there was an offset in my location of around one city block. This made it essentially useless for pinpoint walking directions, which became a problem when I stayed out too late one night and the subway system closed down when I was only halfway back to my hotel.
Since I had downloaded maps though, I could see which subway station I was at and figure out which way to go even without having accurate location. What I didn’t realize until too late, was that there were actually subway stations on both sides of the road there and Maps only showed one. Naturally, I was at the one not shown on the map, so I walked up the stairs looked at the map, and confidently started walking the wrong way because I thought I was on the other side of the street.
Thankfully, after walking for 10 or 15 minutes the wrong way I realized there was not a single building anywhere in sight ahead that was tall enough to be my hotel and realized I couldn’t be going the right way. On the way back I realized my mistake when I saw the two subway entrances.
That was an…interesting…trip for a number of reasons, and it made me appreciate how much easier it is to navigate an unfamiliar place when Maps can pinpoint your location down to the nearest six inches.
In Waze We Trust (except every time it tries to get me to make an unprotected left into standstill traffic)
Visiting a little Midwestern country church for Thanksgiving fundraiser for extended family. Counterintuitively GPS took us down a gravel road, despite the roads in the area being paved. But putting our faith in the googles living in my wife’s phone we continued on. The road worsened, which continued to raise our doubts that it was the correct path. The GPS then told us to take a left to cross a bridge. Well, thankfully we stopped at the turn, because not only was there no bridge in site, the road that seemed to head that way was choked with vegetation, and the remaining road ahead was pitted washboards and dirt. Stopping to consult a paper map indicated that, yes, 20 or so years ago there WAS a wooden bridge where GPS indicated, but the paved road barely visible through the woods was actually the road it should have directed us onto, and led directly to the cute little church. Of course the GPS nor cell towers also wouldn’t capture our exact location, but we dropped a pin for the mighty Google to rectify their error. Switched to HERE Maps (formerly Nokia Maps, IYKYK) on my phone, and it led us correctly to the church.
Makes for a fun story. Good thing it wasn’t night time. There was more involved but I’m not going to air my wife’s mistakes out.
To this day, Google Maps will confidently send you off a cliff if you try to drive to a certain address in Chapleau, Ontario.
The west side of town is built on a grid plan that was clearly laid out by someone who hadn’t actually seen the shape of the land- there’s a steep ridge that runs diagonally across it, so all of the roads have a sudden steep hill in the middle. Except Queen Street, which stops at the top of the ridge and then continues again at the bottom. There’s a very steep footpath from the top to the bottom, but otherwise nothing.
When I first moved to that town, I was navigating to an address on Queen Street at night- there was a very sudden panic stop when I realized that the GPS was literally trying to send me over a cliff! There’s a barrier at the end of the road but I really doubt it’d stop anything more than a runaway shopping cart. I reported the error, but it’s still wrong to this day.
See my comment above for the same situation in Valparaiso, Chile.
I was driving from New Hampshire to Mt. Snow for the first time. I have my skis loaded up in my Jeep, and am making good time. All of a sudden, the GPS has me exit a main road onto a much smaller road that suddenly turns very narrow and dirt. Initially, I decided, screw it, its a Jeep, I can do it. I made it maybe a mile or two in before deciding that I didn’t care if I could make it, I didn’t want to climb to the top of whatever this mountain was, and backed down until it was wide enough to turn around, all the while listening to my GPS telling me to make a uturn.
I don’t get screwed by bad instructions from mapping software (which is the real issue) because I don’t blindly trust it.
Before leaving, I already review the instructions and also zoom out to see if they make sense.
A decent amount of time they don’t and thus, while I’ll use the mapping, I’ll ignore some of the stupid instructions and let it recalculate.
Not GPS, but odd directions. Every October they do something called Danger Run in my city. Basically you show up at night in a car full of your friends and they give you directions to two haunted attractions at discount prices. But the directions are written in limericks and feature code words. The whole point is to have fun figuring out just how the hell to get to these places. They also give you the locations, so you can give up and use your GPS.
Back in maybe 2011, we got really lost on a one lane road and suddenly popped out in the middle of an active rock quarry. Dump trucks driving past us, glaring lights, no idea why it was running so late at night but it was. I have no idea where that quarry is to this day. No one stopped us to ask just what the hell my GTI was doing there, so we left in a hurry before that could happen.
If you ever try to get Google Maps to direct you to the Blue Ridge Parkway, Natchez Trace Parkway, or Skyline Drive (Shenandoah), it does its best not to. I once even had it try to sneak on a reroute to the nearest interstate mid drive at night.
To be pedantic, it’s rarely the GPS itself that causes problems, it’s the navigation software attached to it.
A few years back my wife and I stayed at an Air BnB in Nice in the south of France. The person renting it out had given us instructions on how to get there, that we totally forgot about and instead used navigation.
After a lot of suspicious twists and turns, we took our rented manual Fiat Punto up a very steep narrow road. On one side of us was a stone wall and dense foliage on the other. Did I say it was very steep? It was very steep and it wasn’t clear where to go at the top. I stopped at an angle that unfortunately meant that we could not roll backwards down the hill without having a costly slide down the old stone wall. But I could not get the Punto up the hill, it kept sort of stalling out, it was a sensation I had never felt in a manual car before. I’d give it the beans to get up and the car just meh’d out on me and didn’t move.
We sat at the top of that hill for several minutes genuinely unsure what to do. It had been a long day of driving and even worse, driving a Fiat Punto, and we were both about to crash out. Then I notices the “eco mode” button was activated. Pressed that little sucker and got just enough oomph out of that little trash can to get us up to a tiny spot to turn around. After a 23 point turn in tight conditions, we got down the hill and followed the instructions we were given. Turns out it was a nice little spot, you just gotta follow the instructions to get there.
Anytime Waze suggests exiting early near the George Washington Bridge in NYC to get ahead of traffic.
I’ve had it try to take me down ‘roads’ in Kansas that were basically just mud field access paths for farmers to use. By the time the road really deteriorated, we were in too far to turn around without getting stuck so we just kept up a reasonable speed and thankfully managed to power through a mile or two till we reached a paved road.
I moved to Iceland during the pandemic, during the dead of winter, and bought a new Land Rover Defender so I was pretty confident. Both Apple Maps and Google Maps told me a particular road was open.
When I turned onto the rocky cliff-side road, there was a small sign off to the side reading “lokað”, and I didn’t speak Icelandic – so I didn’t know that meant “closed”.
I didn’t even make it half a mile down that road. Went over a hill, and the road simply disappeared: you couldn’t tell which part was road, and which part was rocky countryside. It was all thick white snow.
Scariest half-mile I’ve ever backed up.
The first GPS that I dealt with was a thing from our marketing dude. I would drive and he would provide the GPS. I don’t know how he had it set, but it would take taking us to the jankiest part of any town after dark. More than once we ended up at a red light with the streets empty other than 50 armed guys in different color bandanas on opposite sides of the intersection.
It was amazing. Like did you know Orlando has a ghetto? That GPS found it. I refused to let him turn it on in New Orleans. I don’t want to know what it could have found there.
The only problem I’ve had since was trying to use Apple Maps to find a gas station in the UAE and it took me to a military base and down a road that required off-roading for a bit in the sand, when I could have just taken a left instead of a right and been there in about 10 minutes.
Back when GPS was new, Hertz installed it in many of their upgraded cars. I flew into Pittsburgh and drove to Eire for a meeting in a Taurus. Unfamiliar with the route, I paid the upgrade for the in-car NeverLost GPS. I was kind of glad I had it when shortly into the trip, I came across a sudden road closure with no direction to get around it other than – “go that way”. Unfortunately the technology was not what it is today and it included a significant lag. I would approach an intersection and the GPS had not caught up to where I was. I would make a decision on my own and then the GPS would tell me I did it wrong. “Recalculating” was the instruction in a very annoying voice that I kept hearing. I eventually had to stop at a gas station and wait for 10 minutes for the GPS to catch up and create a route to follow.
On my motorcycle my Garmin has led me down roads that became gravel several times despite specifying to avoid gravel roads.
It is also insistent on trying to make you take a major highway even if it means going many kilometers out of what would be a perfectly good route on secondary roads.
It also really seems to like steering you to toll roads unless you tell it not to.
Few months ago, Google maps and its infinite wisdom decided to reroute me through a neighborhood to “save” 2 minutes of time instead of going through the main intersection and turning left. I wasn’t super familiar with the route so I decided to just blindly follow the gps.
Road was about the equivalent of driving on the moon, although it wasn’t the worst MI road I’ve driven on…and then it forced me to turn left on a 7 lane main road…during rush hour…and no nearby traffic lights. It wasn’t fun and it absolutely costed more time waiting for a gap.
Oh, i’ll never forget this one. the wife and I were doing a daytrip to Philly to see the the historical sights.We had a new at that time Magellen GPS. we got to the Philly area okay, found ourselves on an elevated, 4lane expressway. I figured we were in trouble when the GPS kept insisting we turn left NOW, into the concrete median barrier. Got off the expressway and found ourselve in what could charitably be described as a warzone. The hookers were waving at us. Got out the paper map and got out of dodge asap!
“ The hookers were waving at us.”
Maybe they weren’t hookers and instead, just some really REALLY friendly locals… LOL
The GPS in my car sometimes warns me that I am driving the wrong way down a road when I am pulling into a parking garage. It does this even though I am not using the GPS.
The there was the time Waze took us off the 401 on to a series of side roads to get us around something. All the bumps and twists and turns caused my the quite young son to get car sick. Admittedly, it didn’t take much in those says, but we had to reprogram to find a pharmacy and get some Gravol.
I believe this may be the earliest true life version of The Office skit:
“In December 1998, a 57-year-old German man and his passenger drove their BMW into the Havel River in Caputh, eastern Germany, after following GPS instructions that failed to note a road ended at a ferry crossing. Ignoring warnings, the driver went down a ferry ramp and into 13-foot-deep water.”
https://www.upi.com/Archives/1998/12/27/Car-accident-by-satellite-guidance/1170914734800/
No specific story but as time goes on I believe Waze less and less. It used to be if Waze told me to exit somewhere I didn’t expect to, it was getting me around a crash or something. Lately it’s because it thinks it will save me 3 tenths of a mile and no time, or even add time to the trip. I can’t trust it anymore.
Oddly, I’ve come to believe Google Maps less and trust Waze more. For some reason, both programs running on my iPhone tend to forget my preferred volume setting and frequently (but not always) default to some lower volume and then only let me change it mid-instruction.
One time, my wife and I were driving to a restaurant in some little town out in the middle of nowhere Texas and she had programmed it into both programs on her phone and when we got into town, both voices were countermanding each other, which was pretty annoying.
Getting into Kansas City after a delayed flight and getting my rental car early one morning, an early Garmin unit had me get off the freeway and go five blocks and hit two stop lights before putting back on the freeway. I was not in the mood for that. But if that was worst thing I encountered over 25 years or so, I can’t complain.
As a mid-late boomer, I spent years with paper maps and Thomas guides. I am used to North up orientation. It is familiar and helps me get the “lay of the land” around me. My wife always used the oblique “3-D” presentation.
Not GPS per se, but Google Maps. I did a solo bike trip from Maryland to North Carolina and planned my route using Google Maps. On my second day, it was raining on and off and I was heading through Fredericksburg, Virginia. The route along the Rappahannock River was nice and led me to the bridge that would take me in to the downtown area. I got to the bridge and… It wasn’t there. Literally. They were rebuilding it and judging by the various debris and soiled condoms laying around, there had been a pause in the work for some time. Luckily I had another map program on my phone so I stood in the rain shielding my phone and figured out a detour which took me on a busy road with cars flying by at 50 or so MPH.
The same day, it was getting late and (I thought) I was nearing the area where I planned to stop at a hotel for the night outside Richmond. I followed my directions to what looked like someone’s driveway. With it getting late and having ridden all day in intermittent rain, I decided to take the chance. I “snuck” passed an old farmhouse on the gravel “road” on my bike while towing a trailer and praying I didn’t get shot at. The “road” led me through woods for about a mile before dumping me out in a neighborhood where I was watched by some confused looking kids. Obviously I survived, but any faith I had in digital maps, GPS or otherwise, was gone. I always try to verify new routes or at least look at different apps (Google, Apple, or Waze) before trusting anything.
Visiting the Tail of the Dragon. At some point myself and a friend decided to take a road that the GPS recommended that went through a forest/park area. Little did we know our lowered Scion xB’s were not made for the giant pot holes, ditches, and gravel we encountered.
We went maybe 2-3 miles at 20mph and it got worse and worse, until we turned back. Next time we visited we noticed they added signs warning about the rough road.
Know where you went…that’s an old ‘logging/forest service’ road. That was the road you had to take to go out north side of Cherokee National Forest before the Cherohala Skyway was built. We sliced a tire on wife’s Suzuki Sidekick on that road…rather nerve wrecking changing tire when big log trucks rolled by. Used a topo-atlas book back in those days.
The closest thing to being steered “wrong” by a navigation device is probably being sent across the bridge near downtown St. Louis through the maze of junctions I now refer to as the “spaghetti bowl”. I ended up missing a turn and briefly in East St. Louis. I don’t think that’s particularly satnav’s fault, just how hard and fast everything shows up there. The bypass routes are much better if you’re not going right downtown anyway.
Still got your hubcaps?
It was my Sentra SE-R, and I think I spent around 45 seconds in E. St.L before turning around and getting back on the freeway. The 17″ six-spokes managed to stay in place until the salt got it.
“spaghetti bowl”
I hear there’s a nice place near there that has great shower spaghetti…