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
Too many years ago, on a whirlwind business trip – we are at the Avis counter in Stuttgart, and we had reserved a GPS – back then it was the Garmin style that you stuck on the windshield/dashboard; so I am checking the GPS out and trying to program a couple of our destinations while my colleague was dealing with the paperwork – I can’t program the Poland destinations – so I ask the agent – does this thing do Poland? Her response – You’re going to Poland??!!! The bad news was that this meant we couldn’t take the Audi A4 we had reserved, but they did find a European Ford focus that they would let over the border. The focus had an in-dash GPS, which was somewhat helpful when the East German superhighway was under construction, and the route I had printed out ahead of time was blocked off – although it was a stressful ride as it had guidance for a while and then would lose it. We made it back to Berlin in time for our flight, which included a bunch of nasty looks from taxi drivers as I temporarily parked in the taxi stand while my colleague went into the airport to get directions to the rental car return – which had a 6” x 9” sign we missed the first three times we passed it.
I’m a firefighter/paramedic in the suburbs of St. Louis, Missouri. One day a few years ago, our backup pumper needed to be picked up from the garage where it had some maintenance done. The shop we used at the time was just across the Mississippi in Illinois. Our assistant chief lived near there. On his way home, he dropped me off, I fired it up, set my destination using Google Maps on my phone, and I was on my way back to the firehouse about thirty miles away. This is more of a situational screwing because i adked for the shortest route. It just happens to be through East St. Louis, Illinois. Picture a combination of Kandahar, Afghanistan at the height of the Middle East conflict and the scene in the original Vacation movie when Chevy Chase is asking for directions while thieves are stealing the hubcaps off the Wagon Family Truckster. I’m alone in a huge lumbering bright red fire truck stopping at stop sign after stop sign just waiting to get robbed or killed by a stray bullet. Needless to say, I’ve never been happier to get back to work.
Leaving Cedar Key FL for Micanopy. Once I got off the island and a bit inland, Google Maps started running me down County Roads with 3-letter designations. Some were barely 1 and a half lanes, residential areas, swamps, etc.
If I rolled down the windows, I could swear I heard banjo music,,,