We’ve all seen that one clip from The Office. No, not Jim’s proposal or Dwight’s obsession with being Fire Marshal. I’m talking about the clip where Michael puts all his faith into his GPS unit and, following its instructions, drives his car into a lake. (If you haven’t seen it, it’s here in relatively poor quality – I seem to have hit upon the one Office clip YouTube does not have in spades.) It’s hilarious, it’s slightly dumb, and it leaves most people laughingly asking who would do something like that?

More people than anyone would think, it turns out.

Quite a few of us have our own stories of GPS hilarity or woe. My mother’s GPS still thinks she goes offroading whenever she turns onto a new road that hasn’t been updated in its database. My friend once wound up at the wrong end of town in front of a completely unrelated gated business office building, which her GPS assured her was the Cheesecake Factory. Another friend, in searching for the airport, was guided to a backwater terminal in a different part of town; the time it took to navigate back to passenger dropoff was long enough to cause her to miss her flight. As I’ve said before, technology is nowhere near infallible.

There comes a point, however, when the user can no longer blame the device. There’s a tech support acronym called PEBKAC – Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair.

Possibly the most frustrating tech support error ever.
This is to say, the user has no idea what they’re doing. Sadly enough, this sort of makes up a good percentage of tech support stories, and has made its way into GPS markets as well. We’ve seen the infamous example with Michael and the lake, and even the popular webcomic XKCD has commented on the phenomenon. Of course, it was only a matter of time until it became public in real life, and it has: a woman is suing Google for giving her poor directions.

Following the pedestrian directions she received from Google Maps, Lauren Rosenberg headed down a rural highway that had no pedestrian paths or sidewalks. Unsurprisingly, she was hit by a car.

You are about to be struck by a moving vehicle!
Rosenberg is suing the driver of the truck that hit her and Google for medical costs and punitive damages. According to Rosenberg, Google should have known better than to advise her to walk down a road that sported no safe place for her to walk. Basically, it was the fault of the giver of directions rather than the person who, against all common sense, decided to follow them.

Keep in mind the disclaimer on Google Maps: “Walking directions are in beta. Use caution–This route may be missing sidewalks or pedestrian paths.”

Ladies and gentlemen, the moral to this story is, while technology is hilariously and sometimes destructively fallible, so are humans. Please apply common sense while using your GPS unit, or just about anything else that tells you what to do. Thank you.

Katherine

Deal of the Day: 7 Inch Portable GPS Navigation Touchscreen Unit, for when you do need directions. Just remember to apply common sense.