What Good are GPS Directions if THIS Happended!
What Good are GPS Directions if THIS Happended!
Posted on May 17, 2016
What Good Are GPS Directions if THIS Happens as a Result?
Hypothermia can often be the result when someone is submerged in the freezing cold waters of a large body of water such as Lake Huron, but that wasn’t the case last week when a 23-year old Canadian woman drove right into the water because her GPS told her to. While the driver just rolled down her window and got out of the car fast enough to swim to shore, her red Toyota Yaris continued to sink to the bottom.
Some people are now wondering whether GPS devices are themselves affected by bad weather, since it was definitely a stormy, foggy night with driving rain and very poor visibility that caused this wrong turn. As the driver headed down the road near Little Tub Harbour at night, her GPS directed her to just keep on going even though she was headed into a boat launch. The next thing she knew, there was a drop and she had hit water.
Constable Katrina Rubinstein-Gilbert was at the scene and acted as spokesperson for the event. She reported that the driver was safe and healthy after the shock, had no hypothermia, and was just embarrassed. No alcohol was reported as a cause of the incident and no charges were made.
But was it really the woman’s fault that she trusted her GPS on a stormy, dark night when she couldn’t see exactly where she was going because the weather was so bad? Many of us do just that and regularly put our trust in technology to figure things out when we can’t. But in this case as her car was headed right for the water, the GPS directed her to keep going. According to Coast watch, the Lake Huron temperature at that point of the bay is approximately 7 degrees Celsius.
Emergency services at Little Tub Harbour made sure no boats entered the bay to prevent anyone from running into the car until it was removed from the lake. Rubinstein-Gilbert confirmed that it had been difficult conditions and poor visibility that had caused the sinking of the Yaris, and that the driver was now in good spirits.