ooh, this doesn't look like Belgium

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/woman-drives-900-miles-gps-error-181605523.html

Put too much faith in technology and you may wind up in Croatia. A 67-year-old woman from Belgium learned that the hard way after she followed (faulty) directions from her GPS device.

The woman only wanted to go about 90 miles from her hometown of Hainault Erquelinnes, Belgium, to pick up a friend at the Brussels train station. Her GPS device sent her about 900 miles to the south before (during the second day of driving) she realized that something was amiss. It's unclear if she entered the address incorrectly or if the GPS was faulty.

Discovery explains that the driver, Sabine Moreau, stopped twice for gas, slept on the side of the road, and "even suffered a minor car accident" along the way. She told El Mundo that she wasn't paying attention.

I was distracted, so I kept driving. I saw all kinds of traffic signs, first in French, then German and finally in Croatian, but I kept driving because I was distracted. Suddenly I appeared in Zagreb and I realized I wasn't in Belgium anymore.

Only in America!

Oh wait! Ditzes are everywhere!

Was the driver's name Stella Artois or was that her preferred distraction?

Nah, that's made here now........my guess is it was a stolen footballer's land rover that was supposed to be delivered to Albania.

This is exactly the reason why I never buy Croatian GPS units.

Back in he pre-GPS days, my sister and her friend borrowed my father's car to go to the mall. My father said, "Take 8 North, to 84 East and get off exit 40".

They stopped and called when they saw the sign that said, "Welcome to Pennsylvania".

An old friend (now deceased ) made plans to visit in Charleston. I told him 'take I-26 east till you see a big bridge'. An hour after he was supposed to show up, he calls me from a pay phone (cells were rare and pricey still) and said 'Should I be seeing mountains?' Seems he got his 'east' and 'west' mixed up.

We have some good friends who we sometimes go on vacation with. In 2011 we all went to Door County Wisconsin, we’d been there several times before and were driving round the bottom of Lake Michigan to stop and see some friends in Chicago first. For our friends it was their first time and they were taking the ferry, the SS Badger from Ludington to Manitowoc. We told them it’s dead easy, get of the ferry turn right and you’ll be there in 90’s mins. We know they’d be arriving before us as we were late setting off from Chicago. We called them when we figured they should be there and they were lost. They’d gone to Milwaukie! Now I can understand turning the wrong way, or putting in the wrong address to start with in the GPS, anyone can do that, but how do you not notice lake Michigan is on your left, not your right for 100 miles, or that the sign posts for Milwaukie are getting closer!! It’s become a legend in our families, Marty going via Milwaukie for any little slip up.

oldsaw wrote: Was the driver's name Stella Artois or was that her preferred distraction?

Haaah.

Yep, I like my good old road map. (I still miss turns and 'take the scenic route' anyhow.)

I remember years ago when my (now now deceased) great aunt and uncle came over from the UK. They spent a week with my Grandmother in PA (the great aunt and her were sisters) and then decided to go visit the other sister here in North America.. in Vancouver.

They had looked at the map, thought it would only take a couple of hours to get there

"Won't that be grand? All the computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop." -Dr. Walter Gibbs, Tron 1982

wasn;t there a commercial a couple of years ago where a GPS told a guy to turn right.. so he did.. right into a store?

A couple of years ago some girls in Arkansas? rented a Mercedes with a GPS, then drove it into a river because the GPS said there was a bridge there. Seems there's a lot of idiots out there incapable of making decisions based on the real world around them. http://www.gpsbites.com/top-10-list-of-worst-gps-disasters-and-sat-nav-mistakes

I was dying laughing while reading that, Wally. Thanks. 900 miles instead of 90.

mad_machine wrote: I remember years ago when my (now now deceased) great aunt and uncle came over from the UK. They spent a week with my Grandmother in PA (the great aunt and her were sisters) and then decided to go visit the other sister here in North America.. in Vancouver. They had looked at the map, thought it would only take a couple of hours to get there

I had a couple guys come over from Germany; at one point they decided they wanted to rent a car and drive to New York City, Chicago, and LA. They figured it couldn't take more than a couple days.

dculberson wrote:

mad_machine wrote: I remember years ago when my (now now deceased) great aunt and uncle came over from the UK. They spent a week with my Grandmother in PA (the great aunt and her were sisters) and then decided to go visit the other sister here in North America.. in Vancouver. They had looked at the map, thought it would only take a couple of hours to get there

I had a couple guys come over from Germany; at one point they decided they wanted to rent a car and drive to New York City, Chicago, and LA. They figured it couldn't take more than a couple days.

That will even happen within the US. Good friend of mine was going to school for hotel management out in Boston, and as part of his program, you needed to do an internship, and you had to have the internship checked out by a professor at the school. Well, my friend was from Chicagoland, and got an internship over the summer in Chicagoland, and was talking with his professor (born raised lived etc all in Boston) about getting it checked out. Prof said, Hey, I'm visiting relatives in Lincoln Nebraska this summer, I'll just pop over and check it out for ya.

He ended up just talking with the hotel manager over the phone when he actually crunched out the mileage between Lincoln and Chicago (But they're both in the midwest??!!?!?)

The stupidity of people never ceases to amaze me.

dculberson wrote: I was dying laughing while reading that, Wally. Thanks. 900 miles instead of 90.

mad_machine wrote: I remember years ago when my (now now deceased) great aunt and uncle came over from the UK. They spent a week with my Grandmother in PA (the great aunt and her were sisters) and then decided to go visit the other sister here in North America.. in Vancouver. They had looked at the map, thought it would only take a couple of hours to get there

I had a couple guys come over from Germany; at one point they decided they wanted to rent a car and drive to New York City, Chicago, and LA. They figured it couldn't take more than a couple days.

Europeans have a hard time managing the scale of our maps.