• Germany edition
Society
Photo: DPA

Driver obeys car navigation literally, promptly crashes

Published: 23 Apr 10 13:53 CET | Print version
Online: http://www.thelocal.de/society/20100423-26745.html

A Bavarian man was given a persuasive lesson in the fallibility of technology Thursday night when he crashed into another car and injured an 11-year-old boy after obeying his car navigation device's command to turn around on a divided autobahn.

Amazingly, the man, 45, took a U-turn on the divided motorway and began driving down the wrong side because the satellite navigation computer told him to turn around, police said in a statement.

The bizarre drama began when the man got onto the wrong motorway at the intersection at Osnabrück Süd in Lower Saxony.

Alerting him of his mistake, the navigation system promptly told him to turn around, which he did, sending him back in the direction from which he’d come, and into an oncoming car.

The 43-year-old man driving the other car was unable to stop, despite slamming on his brakes, and the cars collided. The second man’s son, 11, sustained minor injuries in the accident.

DDP/The Local (news@thelocal.de)

What do you think? Leave your comment below.


Your comments about this article:

14:31 April 23, 2010 by hkypuck
Sometimes common sense ain't so common.
14:53 April 23, 2010 by LancashireLad
Yet another example of an unthinking robot operating on pure logic unable to incorporate the outside world into his current program.
15:49 April 23, 2010 by freechoice
Instead of saying Please Turn Right NOW!!

They should add the word....

Turn Right Now when the Traffic permits..LOL!
17:50 April 23, 2010 by Bushdiver
Though verbal directional instructions given by these various Nav units need a lot of improvment it still needs to have someone with brains and common sense to operate it. Obviously this person had neither the brains or common sense.
18:26 April 23, 2010 by Prufrock2010
Sounds like something peschvogel would do.
18:40 April 23, 2010 by majura
Only in Bayern.
18:45 April 23, 2010 by berlinski
Obey commands without question. Ain't that a German trait?
19:12 April 23, 2010 by mobiusro
Jesus Christ ... that's murder. Today I heard on the radio that on 2 different highways (A5 and another one...) there was a car driving on the wrong way... .

I can't even imagine what happens when one drives with 130+km/h and some idiot comes from the opposite direction.
21:16 April 23, 2010 by LMB222
mobiusro: I've witnessed that twice, and last time almost had a heart attack. At 35.

PS I bet you 99€ that this story has never happened. It's too generic.
02:17 April 24, 2010 by 9w2zek
In Garmin GPS device, we can choose to 'avoid U-turn' but in BMW' GPS, I could not found it, only the voice navigation said '"Please make a U-turn when possible' as we know, most of the road, it's illegal to make a U-turn.
11:09 April 24, 2010 by carloskarloff
In Germany I had a few interesting experiences with on board GPS in rental cars. One told me as I went through a tunnel in Cologne to "Turn right immediately!" On another occasion I was crossing a bridge when the thing commanded me to make an immediate left turn. Into a river. Another lead me around and around in circles in a forest near the Belgian border. But my favourite was the one that, as soon as I crossed the German border into France told me to turn back immediately, as this street was unknown! Must have been programmed by Guido Westerwelle. Eventually I just got myself a good touring atlas and did things the old-fashioned way.
21:31 April 24, 2010 by beeker
One time in a rental car, voice wanted me to drive up ramp to second level of a barn across parking lot from the Wieskirche. don't know what it had in mind, but when i ignored the command it gave me a "recalculating" in its usuall gripy voice.

my own Garmin got all screwed up in Bolzen and wanted me to jump railroad tracks to continue on a nonexistant road past its dead end. I don't think the car could have jumped the concrete and steel barracade let alone the mainline tracks.

U.S. version of garmin wanted me to drive off freeway overpass onto freeway. I don't think car or I would have survived 10 meter drop and truck traffic.
23:13 April 24, 2010 by DonH
Ha, ha. Pleasure boaters used to do this type of thing when GPS first hit the market. They used to program their marina into the unit and it would always give them "direct" headings. They would end up trying to cut through jetties and such at night, not realizing that early model units were only able to give direct headings to destinations unless programmed by the user to lay the trip out in legs. Lots of boaters ran aground in those days.
05:08 April 25, 2010 by wetdawg~
...I was just following orders...
14:58 April 25, 2010 by mehta_p
in tech-world one should expect such incidents as humans want to be fully dependent on machines. We should not totally blame navigation system for accidents.
15:04 April 25, 2010 by cocovelvet
I have been misdirected by the thing so many times I just care less these days to follow its instructions anymore.The thing even has an attitude of trying to be extra-specially clever by making the user take short cuts.... thats where the problems starts ofcourse.

Sometimes it will be barking the whole way through until it nerves me and I have to switch the voice off, or else when I expect it to bark at me to turn right or left somewhere, all of a sudden its quiet and if I don't use my own common sense, will find myself on the wrong direction..... then the same game will start again to make a u-turn when possible.

I'm not sure I need it on my car dashboard anymore......
21:07 April 25, 2010 by wxman
Get a map, nitwit!
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