When GPS turns bad

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.

The Web site Engadget, which has been having a lot of fun with this stuff, wrote in an article titled Motorist has faith in GPS, drives into sandpile that "After blatantly ignoring a prominent 'closed for construction' sign, he threw common sense to the wind and put that 4MATIC system to good use by wheeling over 'a number of warnings and barricades' in search of his next landmark. A police spokeperson said frankly: 'His trip finally ended when he wound up crashing into a pile of sand.' "

A blogger reported in a blog titled Bumper Cars he was in a GPS-caused accident. "As I was cruising through a green light, traveling well under the speed limit, the driver of the other car suddenly turned left because, as he explained later, his GPS told him to.

"His GPS must have stood for Guy Positioning System, designed to help guys who don’t know where the hell they are going, but like most guys it had a poor sense of direction. I say so because it told the other driver, whom I will call "John" because that is his real name, to go the wrong way down a one-way street."

The mostly British phenomenen was featured in a New York Times article titled Turn Back. Exit Village. Truck Shortcut Hitting Barrier.

"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."