In September a New York motorist purposefully turned right onto the Metro-North Railroad train tracks. But then he got stuck and had to abandon his vehicle before it was hit by an approaching train.
According to the New York Times, when Jose Silva was asked by the police what caused him to direct his car onto the tracks, he reported he was doing what his GPS had told him to.
Luckily nothing but Mr. Silva's pride was hurt in the exchange, which means its turned into good fodder for tech blogs.
Crunchgear jokes, "Again, he was fine, and no one on the train was hurt. We're mainly mentioning it to tease the driver, and to offer a warning: use common sense. If your GPS says to turn right, right off a bridge, you may want to use your better judgment."
This makes the second time this year that a New York man has claimed his GPS lead him into peradventure -- on the same train tracks.
In February, another Times article reported a Silicon Valley man in New York on business who also made a GPS-advised right turn onto the same tracks only to find his rented vehicle stuck. "The man calmly hauled out his suitcase, called 911, and waited to wave the train to a stop," the article reports. "But the train couldn't brake in time and ended up dragging the car for 100 feet until it burst into a fireball."
Hmm...we wonder where both of them were trying to go.
Just about everyone has been the victim of faulty GPS directions, but the number of GPS-related car accidents is increasing. Wired's blog reports that 300,000 car crashes in the United Kingdom have been caused by GPS, and 1.5 million drivers admit to swerving through traffic when trying to keep up with their device's suggestions.
"The list of errors caused by slavishly obeying absurd commands would be hilarious if they weren't so dangerous," they write. "Driving onto a railway line, heading the wrong way down a one-way streets, hurtling headlong into ditches, getting stuck under bridges and ignoring road signs."
Find out about the most accurate GPS systems -- if you dare -- in U.S. News' GPS Reviews.
