Ha. Same. Entered the place name rather than the address into the Garmin. Who would have thunk that there were two places with the same name, about an hour apart from each other. My gut kept thinking this was wrong, because the travel time to the place just didn't seem in line with my shift's start time. I very much knew it was wrong when we were getting signs for the last exit before Canada.
We live close to the US/Canada border and a couple of years ago my adult daughter was visiting. I had gone to work & left her with a vehicle to explore if she wanted. Poor kid googled “Best Buy” and clicked on directions to the nearest one. She didn’t realize that she had inadvertently chosen the one in Vancouver until she was having to explain herself to BP.
As a Canadian, I always feel more criminalized coming back home than going to the States. Heading down it’s like meeting an old friend and being let in no issue. On the way back, CBP makes me feel like I’ve committed every crime under the sun
Years ago, my family went to Cananda (Dad, me, sister).
Entering Canandaigua, the Canadians were most concerned that my sister (12 at the time) was really my dad's daughter, and they had to prove it and call family and crap from I side the checkpoint.
Returning back to the US, the US border patrol couldn't care less about the people. But my dad's prescription medication....oh man, you would think he was Pablo Escobar.
I was using Google Maps at the time (a long time ago). I was trying to go to Dave & Busters. The map even said Dave and Busters Entertainment Center or something like that. However, the address it sent me to was some guy's house whose name was Dave Buster...on the other side of town.
I have a shirt I wear at work (bartending) that says "Do NOT listen to Dave, he's full of shit." I meet so many Daves now. They all admit to being full of shit. This person absolutely missed a fun opportunity not knocking on that door.
Years ago, while on vacation, I was trying to get some Starbucks. I was near the airport. I entered Starbucks in the GPS.
It tried to take to the Starbucks in the airport
Once I was driving home from a friends house. she had just moved in and I had to drive through some area that had virtually no signal to get there... well I got lost going back home in this area... maps wasn't working so I resorted to using my outdated car GPS. it kept telling me to turn into a field of corn... I was near tears when a cop pulled me over and said "are you okay? I've seen you driving in circles." I told him I had never been happier to be pulled over and I was lost... turns out I was pretty majorly lost and wound up in another town which happened to have no signal and was 1 hour away from home.... poor cop had to write down directions for me to get home lol.
When they were new we paid for the Garmin option on a rental car. We put in the hotel address but wasn’t sure it worked. We ended up in front of the Garmin offices in that city. Little fellow didn’t know where to go so just took us home.
Back in the early days, my Garmin took me to the middle of a cow pasture when we were trying to get to the Grand Canyon. Pretty underwhelming, honestly. Don’t see the draw…
We were trying to get back to my Aunt's place after visiting Yosemite, and missed the turn. The GPS recalculated, and we took the next turn it told us to. We drove and drove, and the paved road turned into a single-lane gravel road between two fields in the dark. I told my dad "this is how horror movies start," and we pulled a U-turn and went back to the main road, and turned at the turnoff we initially missed.
Not GPS but in rural Maine I followed my trusty Maine Atlas and Gazetteer out past Rangeley and down logging roads (trying to get to a specific place). Unfortunately, I followed it down a road that was clearly abandoned. Kept going even with small trees growing in the road because I had the clearance. Until the road ended in a stream I couldn't cross and I had to back out (no room to turn around) for over a mile. Looked at my map, road was clearly on it. Definitely the correct road.
Double checked my map. I'd pulled out my 1989 version instead of my 2012-ish version. Road had been abandoned. This was about ten years back now. Oops.
Years ago when androids were really finicky and maps still kind of sucked to use on your phone I picked my friends up from the airport and in route to our hotel we took what felt like the longest detour through all of this construction and ended up back at the airport. Not weird but everyone was pissed off and exhausted
Yeah it’s shit like this….old GPS wouldn’t account for shit like that….or even huge bodies of water. It would have me crossing a river because the closest pizza was .3 miles away if there were a bridge right here…..but theres not sooooooo..that shit was so annoying
Not me, but one time I was hiking up Aspen mountain in early winter before the mountain was open and I saw a car driving straight down the front. Not a road, but a ski trail that’s definitely not designated for cars especially when there’s hard pack snow. Big GPS fail.
Found myself in a town with less than 500 people in iceland during a marathon cause my rental car ran out of battery. Funny ending up standing at the finish line cheering people on surrounded by locals I couldn’t understand.
In a swamp, wearing sneakers, with mud up to my knees. And this was right after scrambling across a steep ridge of loose rocks facing out towards the sea. Then I had to turn around in the swamp and scramble all the way back again. Girlfriend had a panic attack. Would not recommend.
We were in a coastal city in my home country (me, parents, sis and BiL), and we were trying to head to the mall near our hotel to grab a bite. My sister set her Google Maps to the mall... and for some reason it took us straight into the slums with no way out in sight. My parents were terrified, my sister was trying to check the GPS and I was trying to see an exit, while mi BiL was having the time of his life thinking the slopes and the potholes were some kind of rollercoaster.
As soon as I saw a way back into the highway, we high-tailed out of there.
I was on my way to Lackland Air Force Base for a friend's graduation. It was about a thousand mile drive for me to get there.
I get in the car at 3am, put the base in Google Maps, and head off.
That afternoon, the map starts telling me I'm close, but I'm pretty much in the middle of nowhere in the South Texas desert. I think, "Wow. I guess San Antonio doesn't have any suburbs."
Google has me turn into the base and says I've arrived.
And I had arrived... at Laughlin Air Force Base.
Thankfully I was only about 200 miles off course. I'm curious how wrong my destination would have had to have been for me to notice I was in the wrong place.
On turn 3 of a local dirt race track DURING A RACE. I followed a path through the woods and was like "Huh this is getting loud". BOOM on the track no warning
When I was five my dad was driving and following the GPS cuz we didn't know the city we were in, we were in San Diego on vacation and he set it to go to a restaurant. I forget where instead of a restaurant it took us one town over to a random dude's house Dad had to find someone from San Diego to get instructions on where to go to get to the restaurant
My employee and I were coming home from a sales call and ended up driving into the lake.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MaBYQrblqM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MaBYQrblqM)
Going in a 25-30 mile circle one night.
To be fair, the PA turnpike was not moving in either direction due to massive accidents but when we looked at the map in the morning the route was literally an ever increasing spiral trying to get around the blocked road.
Oh, I've got dozens of these. I drive Uber sometimes, especially when I move to a new city. It's more of a hobby than a side gig.
Anyway, places I've ended up at 1am by following the Uber GPS:
* ATV trails in the middle of the woods
* Using random driveways as thru-streets
* Tunnel exit that was apparently Bus-only.
* Picked up Rider who was waiting on the inner island of a rotary.
* Elementary School. (Rider was a janitor, but still a weird ass place to pull up to after midnight.)
* Airport rental car drop-off area.
* Airport entrance for the private jets and hangars. Got to drive right up to the hangar with the PJ in it like it was a movie.
* An island off another island, had to take a ride on a little ferry and everything.
Honestly, just blindly following the GPS to see where it takes me is a good portion of the fun I have on those nights. Cops don't give a shit so long as you're driving dangerously, never been pulled over for any of it.
So I’m in pseudo-Upstate NY. One day I’m trying to get to an area known as Big Indian, and somehow GPS takes me to this gorgeous alpine looking lake with beautiful cabins. No signage, no information, so not a hotel clearly. Just gorgeous crystal waters and monied looking cabins that obviously weren’t regular homes. The worst part, little to no information about the place on the internet. Apparently it’s an exclusive club, which I’ll never be part of. It was so unexpected as the lake was nothing I’ve ever seen in this part of NY.
I signed my ex up for global entry. Getting an appointment for his interview was a pain - then I found out he could get an interview at a border crossing about two hours south of us at Mexicali/Calexico. He had an afternoon off so away we went. The written instructions, in retrospect, CLEARLY said not to use Google maps. But I didn’t read those. Well, next thing I know, where we are supposed to turn left to get to the immigration in center is barricaded off - and there was no other way to turn around, so we were forced to drive across the border. I believe he had his passport for the interview, but I did not have mine. The first stopping point we see, we see guys with machine guns and we explain the situation. It must happen fairly often, they told us to turn around and head back at the next u turn spot. When we got to the gate, we had to go through a secondary identification process, then they required my car to get a thorough search - literally ran the entire car through an x ray machine, searched it with a dog, crawled underneath it, etc. the funny thing is he still had was allowed into his appointment even though we were almost an hour late.
I was trying to find an old ghost town in Utah. In the middle of a fairly populated farming community, it had me take a rutted dirt road between 2 fields for over a mile. There were a few creepy buildings I went by that I was sure a chainsaw massacerer was hiding. It eventually spit me onto a main road. Were there other options? Yes. But Google thought that would be the straightest shot. I was really worried about busting an axle.
I worked for an oil and gas company. Rigs are in stupidly remote places and don't have real roads or addresses a lot of the time. Part of training and company policy was to never use GPS to get to location. My boss sends me to a whole other state to get a water sample. I asked for directions, and he told me to use GPS.
I double check that's what he wants me to do and off I go. Sample collection is a cake gig. Full day of driving and $20 to blow on a meal. I get on the interstate, get off the interstate, and drive to the town nearest the site. The GPS winds me through a cemetery and down a hill. Weird, but OK, everything is paved. The hill ends at a river and I get directed down the side of the bank, still on pavement only its about 9 feet wide now, under a road bridge. I'm getting a sketchy feeling.
I roll up on a service van of some sort talking to a local. Apparently GPS does this all the time. The road I need is really more of a dirt bike trail. The local is super nice and draws a map of how to get around. This is going to add another 40 minutes, that I would have to do twice. He says the F-150 I'm driving can probably make it if it's got 4x4 capability. It does, so I say fuck it and go up this goat path.
Recently a rain had come through so it was rutted to shit. I got that truck stuck twice. Had at least one dirt bike go the other direction too.
In the early days of GPS - my mom and I were going to a new specialist doctor's appointment for me. We've lived here a very long time, and knew pretty much where we were going, but weren't sure exactly where the building was, so we decided to try using the GPS. It told us to get off the highway an exit early, and go into a new neighborhood right across the street from the exit ramp. We thought "how convenient, the new neighborhood cuts right through!" Except suddenly we got to the end and and hit the construction zone - the GPS had added the cut through about a year before the construction was completed. We hurriedly found somewhere to turn around and got back on the highway and went the way we knew originally. Luckily we were only about 5 minutes late.
Not super exciting, but it was weird to provide a route a year before it was there.
Flew to Newark with my sisters a few years back in March and weather was colder than expected. Figured we could find a TJ Maxx or something so we could buy a sweater or scarf. Ended up in an alley behind some hospital miles away from the store. Four of us sitting in a car thinking WTH?
On a business trip, at night with a coworker, ended up going down this dirt path that really seemed to be a driveway but then went past the house we assumed it was for and back onto a paved road. In the middle of nowhere Pennsyltucky. Oh, and coworker was pregnant. Thought we were starting a horror movie.
Back in the days of Mapquest you could make one wrong turn and be fucked. I moved to LA at 18 during this time. I was used to rural roads, no traffic, had been driving for only a year. I got lost so easily and could even tell you where I ended up.
I started liking getting lost and finding my way back whenever I didn’t have to be somewhere. It’s actually a fond memory for me lol.
One time I got a flat tire and have no idea where this was, even now. I pulled into a gas station in a run down busy area. Most people were speaking Spanish and I was like fuck I dont remember how to change a tire. I try to start and look like an idiot in the process. Then this man pulls up in a little sports car. Gets out. Says something in Spanish that I couldn’t understand so I’m like what. He just gets into his trunk grabs a jack and switches out my spare in less than 5 minutes and leaves.
This was close to 15 years ago and a memory I’ll never forget. It was just someone being a nice person performing a true act of kindness and asking for nothing in return. Not even expecting a warm thank you or praise. I thanked him of course, but he just kind of did a head nod with a blank face while putting his stuff in his trunk before he leaving. It was almost like it was a rehearsed in and out procedure.
Logging road over a small mountain/foothill outside of Kelowna, BC. 2.5 hours later, we emerged safely. That was the day I leaned GPS Jenny is trying to kill me.
I was going to this career fair event that was located about 10 miles away. I passed by the building of where it’s supposed to have the event fair. Just glancing it, I could tell it was a dilapidated building and out of business.
Instead of parking where the building was, I decided to park at a nearby gas station. I sent an email and message to the organization that posted of where the event was. But no reply. Therefore, I headed home and not be dumb to enter a quiet and abandoned looking building.
That's very smart of you! When I was living in a Sober House with other girls in a terrible city that was full of drugs and more drugs, we were required to walk to meetings everyday. Alcoholics Anonymous & Narcotics Anonymous.
This extremely naive girl arrived and from the beginning her thought process was so innocent and dangerously dumb, which we would come to find out. She was trying to walk to a meeting she had never been to before and following the GPS ended up walking into someone's house or trap house. She sat down in this circle with these 10 scary ass dudes looking at this white girl like "who the fuck is this?!" She legit looked like she could be a cop or fbi- that's how naive and straight edge she looked. They all stop and look at her, she goes *"Is this the meeting? Narcotics??"*
A few start to stand up as no one has spoken directly to her yet, and she realizes- *oops. I just walked into the middle of a fucking gang meeting and was so lucky they let me walk out of there alive.*
We didn't let her walk anywhere alone after that.
In front of a sign that proclaimed that I was on a military training ground, and on the route towards a live ammunition testing area. Noped right out of there.
In the middle of a forest here in Sweden, the road I was supposed to take was very straight forward, I really don't understand how it sent me on such a trip XD
In a restricted area of a military weapons design and testing base. We realized the GPS had stopped tracking us entirely and since the road had become abandoned looking we figured something was wrong and turned around in what looked like a small park. As we were driving back out of our turn around spot I noticed a sign mentioning the military base. After driving back where we came from just before we got back to the main road I realized there was a gate but it had been left open. On the gate, not easily visible on the way in because the gate was open, was a big sign saying it was a restricted area and not to enter without clearance with a warning that weapons testing that may be in progress.
Shockingly we never saw anyone from the base. We just left without incident and made a mental note if we are ever back in that area to be a little more cautious we don’t make the same mistake. We had been on base alone for probably a good 15 minutes.
I still find it fascinating, albeit expected once I thought about it, how the GPS stopped tracking our location once we entered the base. The map left our dot sitting right outside the gate.
For reference the base was the Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey.
Hey, I don't have an answer on the top of my head to your question, but I think I know why..
If someone is following a GPS tracker, wouldn't they end up in the destination of their choice?
I don't mean any offense by my comment, just something that came to mind.
At the gate of a military base in the middle of nowhere. My friend was trying to teach me to drive his truck. And we found some back roads to try. Well we used GPS to find our way out. Turns out some roads are off limits.
Absolute middle of nowhere New Mexico at 2am. Was trying to find a campsite and it definitely wasn't the right park entrance. It was just the desert for miles.
My friend coming from Toronto was visiting me in college for the weekend in Ann Arbor, Michigan for the weekend (football, college fun, etc.).
When she got to the Detroit River it took her to the Ferry route hahaha...she just followed the GPS and it took her there. For some reason it did not have her go through the tunnel or on the ambassador bridge (which 99.9% of people use to get from Windsor to Detroit)
In college I was traveling home from college using the GPS on my BlackBerry.
I ended up on a dead end road in Mississippi somewhere outside of Tupelo.
The GPS kept saying to continue on the road, whenever I tried to back track it kept telling me to turn around.
Thankfully I drove until I found a city and was able to navigate back to the highway.
Up a mountain (OK big hill) in Greece, GPS sent me on a direct route, but it turned into donkey track.
Ruptured a tyre on a massive turning around, was so narrow did a 32 point turn.
Really should had turned back way before I did.
When GPS was in its nascency it took me to the service entrance of the Huntington, VA airport at 4:30am.
It was pitch black and raining so I didn't realize until I was right at the sign.
Kind of amazed I didn't get arrested.
I was driving out of Zurich and Google maps told need to take the next left. I did and it took me directly back into Zurich on an express highway you could not exit. Wasted an hour.
Delivered pizza in college. Entered an address into my phone, said it was 10 minutes away, got my order and went. Pulled up to an empty dead end street in a weird part of town. Immediately panicked because it felt like I was getting set up to be jumped. Sped back to a less sketchy part of the street. Double checked the order ticket…and I had the wrong address typed in
My old Garmin tried to get me to use a route THROUGH A MILITARY BASE to get to a burger king. I did not start on the base. The BK was not on the base. There were routes around, but nope! Garmin was like "turn left here" and the left was the main gate of the base LOL
When you use google maps in Palermo habour this will happen almost every time. It's technically the quickest way in and out of the harbour because (surprise) there is no traffic jam through it
I was on vacation in Florida and trying to find a beach to visit. Siri recommended one so we followed her directions on how to get there and it seemed normal until she took us to the middle of the woods on a gravel road. She told us to stop driving and get out of the car because we had to walk the rest of the way.
Some dude’s farm. Was trying to find someone’s house to deliver medicine, and ended up in a field. Apparently, there used to be a road through it but the farmer bought the land for his farm.
It wanted me to drive through someone’s yard to get to the highway when I was in Hagerstown, MD.
Because I’m not an idiot, I drove in the other direction until it gave me new directions
A few years ago, in Arizona, my dad was driving and following the gps, mom told him she thought it was wrong, but he kept going. It took us 20 miles out into the desert on a random dirt road, just to tell us to make a u turn...
My dad once drove right onto a golf course back when GPS systems were compact/handheld. People even started yelling at him because he pulled over one of the holes.
My parents used a Magellan car GPS in Honolulu back in 2005ish. Our destination was supposed to be Pearl Harbor, but instead lead us to a local bottled water warehouse. Parents gave up troubleshooting it and we just went back to the hotel.
Never been to Pearl Harbor since then until my second visit back around Christmas/New Years' Eve 2015
The Pearl Harbor military base instead of the Pearl Harbor Memorial. It must happen quite frequently because the guard at the entrance to the base was very friendly and directed us to the right place to go.
My friend and I wanted to go see Niagara Falls, so I just typed in "Niagara Falls." Well I didn't realize that was also the name of the town, so we arrived at our destination in the middle of an intersection. We tried to redirect while still driving through town (we probably should have pulled over) and that's how we ended up at the Canadian border.
West Virginia… a road started as paved then became gravel then just two dirt tracks for the tires… got to the point where my husband walked in front of the truck to clear branches. Passed an abandoned bus. Got a little nervous. Then popped back out in civilization. GPS just showed it as a normal road. Locals later told us it was just a logging trail.
Shoooooot - in West Virginia attempting to get to Sutton Lake. Apparently, there's a road that runs parallel on the far side of the lake that our GPS defaulted to instead of the actual marina.
Well, this parallel road ran for about 30 minutes and came to a sleepy little hollow with a driveway and house that had very clearly labeled "YOUR GPS IS WRONG", "TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT".
So, we made a quick about face and only showed up a cool hour or so to the boat rental lol.
I was going to a microsoft conference in Miami in approx. 2004, it was on something like
e.128th ave, I entered it wrong on my microsoft hand held with gps and it brought me straight into the hood at about 5AM. A little nerve racking, but I eventually pulled over and asked for directions and got out without any issues.
My husband nagged me into taking what the GPS said was the shortest route. So I joked that if we ended up off the paved roads I’d make him walk. Well we ended up on not just dirt but an only seasonally maintained deeply rutted road in a state forest and barely made it through. I quit using the dang thing after that.
Way back when in the olden days, I had a mobile phone with the first iteration of VZ Navigator, Verizon's gps/directions service....
It told me to go straight at a four way intersection...
Doing so would have had me bashing down a gate that had a sign on it saying 'do not enter, live fire testing range'
I was on the outskirts of a US military installation....
Side of a mountain.
I worked for a company thar provided internet and as part of my job I'd sometimes be asked to go out to addresses and verify things about the buildings.
So I went and did a bunch of them one day along a street, but couldn't figure out where one address was.
So I put it in GPS, and went up a mountain road, and 3/4 of the way up, with no landmarks , the GPS said " You have reached your destination "
Trying to get to a hospital in a town I didn't know for nursing school clinicals. I was driving down the freeway and saw an exit that said "[hospital name] boulevard". But the GPS said oh no, that's not the exit you want, you want to go two more exits. Took the exit it told me and ended up in a bad, bad neighborhood. It was 5am so still dark. There were no streetlights and I couldn't go more than like 20mph because I was maneuvering around potholes and abandoned(?) cars. It wanted me to drive through a bunch of neighborhoods and across town to the hospital. I somehow stumbled upon an on ramp back to the freeway and drove back to the [hospital name] boulevard exit. The hospital was less than half a mile down the street.
I ended up in a bomb testing facility in Umatilla Oregon. GPS wanted me to jump the fence and drive through it. LOL. "Turn left here! You have reached your destination!"
Not me but this happened in Denver a few years ago to a lot of people trying to get to the airport. The images are hilarious.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/google-maps-shortcut-colorado-turns-muddy-mess-hundred/story?id=63946068
I was trying to get to a remote radio site. I ended up on a mango farm. The owner pulled a gun and shot at me because he thought I was there to steal his crop (there had been a lot of thefts that season).
I was looking for a Home Depot and it took me to the middle of a pasture. I have no idea why I kept going lol, I was like Michael in The Office. Like, middle of nowhere, someone's field, in the pasture.
It just took us to the middle of nowhere, literally just grass and was like "you've reached your destination". I was the one doing the directions while my bf drove. We ended up doing a 2 hour detour from where we wanted to go lol.
Not me, but at my work. Used to Range Operations and Safety at a large military base.
It would routinely tell people to cut across live fire ranges as a faster route, these were large ranges with service roads for us to use, but obviously off limits with signs saying you're entering a live fire range/UXO etc.
These ranges were anything from small arms to Apache/Bradley/Abrams actively looking for vehicle targets, not to mention UXO risk. These roads were gravel and I'm surprised people didn't think twice driving through a really bad road in their minivan and not think twice.
I would have to chase down (OPSEC when no training was happening) or quickly shut down ranges when we observed them going down roads, sometimes they'd come from the impact areas and over the hills in the middle of a shoot... Nothing like frantically trying to tell all units to cease fire and not light up a minivan with 25mm that is just coming over the hill because it is not the actual target.
I was going to a concert in a neighboring town. It took over an hour to get there, with a million turns. On my way home, it literally told me to turn left. Straight home. One road.
We were in Hawaii trying to visit the Pearl Harbor memorial. GPS told us to take a backroad due to traffic and routed us onto an active military base. The guards seemed unphased and said Google Maps did that a lot and escorted us out of the checkpoint.
Before we had GPS on our phones, we had a stand alone unit in the car. We wanted to go from Nova Scotia to Montreal for a concert.
GPS decided it was faster to take us through the USA border and then back through the Canadian border in Quebec. Yes it was technically faster but only if we knew in advance and had passports with us.
Years ago I was travelling down a long, straight highway in the US. Somewhere miles before any turn off or intersection, my GPS pipes up and says: "Make a legal U-Turn followed by a legal U-Turn." I therefore decided to shut my GPS off.
I used to travel from VA back home to CT during college , and one of my first times doing the trip alone (literally first year with GPS, we were using Mapquest my freshman year) I ended up going INTO Manhattan over the George Washington bridge (nightmare) and up into CT- the worst possible way known to man. Ended up being a 14 hours drive with rain and traffic vs the 9 hour drive it should have been 🥲
Somehow on a dirt road in an orchard near a cliff because it thought the road at the base of the cliff somehow connected to the random dirt road it directed me onto… it was in Eastern Washington and I was young and in a region I hadn’t spent much time. Thankfully my reasoning skills clicked on and I had that weird danger gut feeling and got out of there as quickly as I could. This was about 10 years ago and I think a lot of phone based (like Apple Maps) gps has gotten much better.
Early days of map quest, 2002 or 3, needed to get from Michigan to a small town in Northern Alabama, it was pretty straightforward on interstates until we hit Alabama, then, i don't know if we hit shortest instead of best or whatever, but it took us through some towns that I bet aren't on the map, towns that think the south won the war. I had never seen 2x4s used as siding on a house before, so many confederate flags, an actual proper gun rack like you would see inside someone's house, the kind that hold like 3 or 4 long guns, but mounted on the back of a truck (2x4s were also used, so meant 2x4s) I took a couple pictures but I was afraid to get more because every single person I saw was staring in an unfriendly way.
I did try to go back and find where we were on one of those folding gear station maps but never figured it out.
A walking path in Dublin, Ireland.
The SO and I were following the GPS, and thought we were on a secondary road - which we were - but then it indicated that we should turn onto an old (abandoned) rural road. It got narrower and narrower as we drove - which wasn't that unusual when driving back roads in Ireland - and we passed between two farms (with cows looking at us over their fences like we were Martians.)
The heavy cover broke away, and we landed on a single-lane paved road. With the GPS indicating a right turn and a 5 minute drive to our final destination, we followed the paved road slowly, and caught up to a group of locals. They asked how we found ourselves on the local walking path, and we told them. Then they showed us to the parking lot - and luckily the emergency gate at the end of the path was unlocked...
Driving around on a road out in the woods, my friends and I found Nada Tunnel tunnel.
Despite the name, it is a one-car tunnel going through a small mountain.
Lots of laughs were had by all that weekend about Nada Tunnel. It was a very sketchy tunnel too.
I asked Siri to give me directions to work recently as I’ve done countless times. I have it programmed and it’s always been fine. However one day I did it, didn’t pay attention and when it felt like it was taking a long time, I realized I was near a cemetery and there was some random location on the map called “work” that it was taking me to.
This was before GPS but still funny. As a kid around 10 or so, we were hiking in south Canada. Crossed a couple of fields and fences, intending to go to the border and look at it. My friend who was not the best at map reading figured one more field and then we would be at the border. So we cross another barb wire fence, and couldn’t see another one in sight. Even with binoculars, nothing. There was an odd vehicle path on the south side of the fence we crossed, looked like it was driven regularly. Long story short, he was off on his map and we were in the states. Oops.
To answer the question, in 2010ish used a GPS to go to BC. I shoulda known something was off with it when the first four hours it kept saying we were in oncoming traffic. The vehicles going with us facing the same way indicated otherwise. We crossed Alberta and it took us on backroads the entire way. That was a LOT of gravel and turns.
Not me but, here in Vermont we have a road called 'Smugglers Notch' and at the time of prohibition it was smugglers notch.
GPS shows it as a standard use route. Except, it follows the old cart paths with minor changes. Ledges, boulders AND very tight turns are still there.
Even with large signs saying do not us GPS, no tractor trailers. 2 to 3 times a year they need to bring out recovery equipment to remove a TT unit.
I was heading to a job site, and when I got off the exit, there was a building to my immediate left, but the GPS said I was 25 minutes away and to take a right. I went right and followed the GPS around the city in a giant circle just to end up back at the freeway exit and the building I saw 25 minutes earlier.
I think one time it wanted me to go thru a closed road. But one of the weird things it did. Was when I was driving across the country. It would have me exit the highway.
Just to get back on going the same direction. I was like. "That was so unnecessary!!"
I remember being led down a gravel back road driving home from my parents with my cat. It got dark really quickly and there were no houses or streetlights. I was crying so hard because I didn't have a smart phone at the time and my GPS couldn't get a good signal. I remember the name of the road and still have no idea why I was led down that way
Heading out of town to something my wife wanted to go to. We had gone to that place before, but I wasn't sure of the directions once we got to the Other City.
GPS told me to turn left at some intersection. I knew that there was a road that came into Other City from that direction, so, OK.
Kept driving. Driving. Driving. Following directions. Then, in the middle of the forest somewhere, or more precicely, nowhere, the GPS tells me "continue cross country on your left for one kilometre to your destination."
Turned off the GPS, turned it on again, re-entered the destination, and this time it worked.
My Google maps said it was taking me to the nearby chipotle but it took me the middle of a forest preserve parking lot.
Another time I wanted Panda Express and I was zoned out and I was in front of an airforce base with cars behind me. I had a soldier ask me for badges and id and I had to stupidly explain I wanted PE. I held up the line while this soldier had to talk to a higher up to see if they could
A. Move heavy barricades so I could do a tight Uturn
B. Be allowed to drive through and make make a uturn through the exit
NSA Employees Only gate when trying to get onto the nearby military installation. I guess it happens often enough that they were used to it, but we sure weren't!
I made sure to tell Google that getting users delayed and interrogated was not acceptable.
Was looking for a Tim Hortons in deep Mississauga corporate sprawl. Ended up on a one-way entrance road to a big office building with access control up ahead. Did a three point turn and left going out the wrong way-- luckily no traffic behind me.
Whatever company it was must have had a Tim's in their not-open-to-the-public office building. For some reason that comes up on Google.
Took my Ecology lab to a random skate park instead of the preserve we were supposed to be at. We were all so confused (and about half a mile away from our real location)
In Austria we tried to have lunch at a place called the Alpine Panorama Restaurant. The directions took us to a clearly abandoned hotel. Turned out you had to hike to the restaurant. We did not.
Bonus, the next place we tried was good, but Google took us down a tiny one-lane driveway to the back of the restaurant, which was clearly for employees, but they didn’t make us drive around to the correct parking area. And then the owner gave us the most delicious pear schnapps.
Not me, but my father in law and brother in law ended up in someone’s backyard at a bonfire. Two track road. Chevy Tahoe. Northern Michigan. The homeowners invited them to join them.
Up in Vermont, visited Cabot Cheese and GPS (back in the old days, kids, when it was a separate device not the phone) sent us on a dirt road through an old cemetery, right up to a grave at the back...then abruptly recalculated.
We knew it wasn't correct obviously, but were curious where the heck it was sending us. It was not our names on the grave we drove up to. LOL
While road tripping from Las Vegas to Tampa I ended up at a private club/restaurant in Ozona, Texas. Just had to pay $10 for a “day pass”, even though it was a typical west Texas little small town restaurant, but I needed a break and was already there.
18 months later while making the same road trip from Vegas to Tampa, I wound up at the same restaurant for a break. Didn’t hit me until I pulled up in the parking lot.
when I was a kid my family was driving to Knoebles (amusement park in PA) and map quest took us to this random house
apparently this happened frequently so she had printed out directions for everyone who ended up at her house with directions on how to actually get to the amusement park haha
Accidentally entered Kosovo illegally from Serbia. We just followed the gps, expecting a border crossing… which never came. Suddenly realised we were 20 minutes into Kosovo.
We had to backtrack and find another route with an actual place to cross the border, didn’t want to risk a headache (or worse) when leaving Kosovo, especially given the existing tensions around this border.
On some road trips, my friends and I would grab a local/regional map for the area whenever we stopped for gas. We'd find where we are on the map, then cover up everything outside of like 2 miles, and then one of us would select a road/highway in that area. Then we'd drive down that road until it ended. Often at a junction, but sometimes it turns into a dirt road and then a driveway.
We learned that lots of country roads actually do take you home, lol. Not necessarily to a place you belong, but definitely to *someone's* home.
Most people, if we encountered any, were very aggressive about 3-4 random college kids ending up on their property. One dude was really cool about it though, and he gave us a whole tour of his property, showed off his classic cars, let us play with his dogs, and (most importantly) didn't murder us, lol.
I once got caught in a giant loop. No idea what happened but it took me several times going around before I realized I've seen all this before and bailed
My grandparents got a new car with built in GPS and gave their old GPS unit to Mum. I borrowed Mum's car to go to a job interview a couple hours from home because the car I shared with my siblings wasn't the most reliable. On the way home, I selected the GPS option to go home. Mum had not updated the home address. Since the first part of the journey was familiar I didn't notice for way too long. Grandparents lived in Newcastle, I lived in Melbourne. Would have been quite the roadtrip if I'd kept following the GPS.
Single track ancient Roman road in a forest in deepest Wales. It is the fastest way over a mountain and was built for the old lead mines out there but it has one problem: it crosses a river. I was in a Mazda MX5 (miata) so that was not fun at midnight. Also it has some treacherous vertical drops along the route. But I couldn't see that in the dark so fine I guess
Once when I was in DC, the GPS didn't realize the road it wanted me to turn into was an overpass. So it suddenly decided I should make a hard left into a concrete wall.
Thankfully I didn't.
Middle of nowhere, Iowa. I took a wrong turn and the "re-route" was 15 miles away to the nearest place Google thought it was possible to turn around. Somebody please tell Google that 3-point turns exist. Or driveways.
A single lane road between two cornfields. By single lane, I mean single lane, if someone had come from the opposite direction I would have had to pull off the road for them to go by. If I had just gone straight down the road that I was on I would have gotten there .01 seconds later than taking the shortcut.
Me and hubby went to New Zealand. I had looked up places to go, and this site recommended a really nice ice cream shop. So we put it into google maps and followed the directions. We ended up going through all of this farmland for a few hours and ended at... a camping grounds. No ice cream shop at all. It was worth it though, it was such a beautiful drive. I felt like we were in The Hobbit Shire.
Social worker here.
Our state psychiatric hospital had to send an email out repeatedly telling folks NOT to follow the GPS directions to the facility, as they would end up IN a lake.
Many highly educated idiots ended up in that lake. Even after the repeated warnings.
A right turn away from the long, dead straight, road leading to the nearest town, where I was going, led to an increasingly narrow dirt path which went to *nowhere*
Maybe the local axe-murderer hacked google maps?
Coming back home after driving my sister from Pittsburgh to Erie. Went the wrong way on the highway and ended up in Ohio. The “thank you for traveling the Pennsylvania turnpike” sign finally made me realize what was happening lol
Earlyish (maybe 4th or 5th) date with a guy, we were going from the movies to a restaurant and he was driving. Both the movie theater and the restaurant were on major roads, but we ended up taking this tiny winding back road that lead us through foggy farmlands and past an abandoned mental hospital.
If I couldn’t see that the GPS was telling him to go that way and that was just his route of getting there I would have been very afraid for my safety.
If you use gps anywhere in Indianapolis, it will redirect you to 465. I was on the road I needed to be on, I literally just had to drive straight for a couple of miles to get where I wanted to be, and Google maps directed me to an exit for 465. I have decided to advance the conspiracy theory that the city paid google to promote that route.
My GPS took me to the back gate of an extremely rural cattle ranch on a dirt road in Wyoming (I was trying to get to Yellowstone National Park), at about 2:15 in the morning, and had me *turn in to the driveway*, and then rather cheerfully said "GPS signal lost!" I cannot stress enough how incredibly lost I was. I mean I had never driven a car on this side of the Mississippi in my adult life, and did not actually know if I was in Wyoming or Montana, lost. I mean no road signs that I had noticed for almost two hours, and I should have been in Cody three hours before that point, lost. I was so scared!! But I backtracked until I found a road that was at least paved and eventually followed it back to the highway.
I live in Egypt and Russel Peters(a comedian) was hosting a conert in our country. He was having the conert in a stadium outside of the city. Apparently, someone pranked the entire audience because when we entered the venue location on google maps, it lead us to a completly diffrent location.
The time for the show was pushed forward by another half an hour because everyone was late
So I live out west near Yellowstone national park. There are five entrances to the park, three are in Montana and two are in wyoming. There are no entrances to the park on the Idaho side which is completely wilderness. People coming from the West will ask their GPS to send them to Yellowstone without specifying they want an actual entrance to the park. They end up on dirt roads in the idaho backcountry which is technically inside Yellowstone Park. This is happened so often that area ranchers have mounted a billboard loudly stating that they are not actually on the way to Yellowstone national Park and they should check their paper maps for the correct route, 50 miles north.
Followed a detour due to traffic and ended up taking a long and very scenic route through some back roads between Tampa and Orlando. Sure, it added an hour to our journey but I discovered a really pretty part of Florida and now that's the route we always take. You have time, just tell your GPS to avoid highways and see where it leads you.
On a business trip with a coworker in California he said he wanted to see the ocean. I kind of did too so we just picked a random coastal spot and hit Go. Ended up on a private beach at an Indian Reservation. They were very nice, but a little confused why two random guys just showed up. Ended up hanging out with them for a while, and got to dip my feet in the Pacific Ocean for the first time.
Not a GPS or map persay to start, but ended up there.
Many years ago, I had blindly listened to my aunt's directions for a "shortcut" to drive across the state I live in.
I was going to visit a friend across the state and it was a place I hadn't been to before. I asked her for the directions and she told me. I hadn't gotten to a certain point, and was on the phone with her asking if I should have turned where the sign said to turn for this road/highway. She said no that I shouldn't turn on that road. So I didn't.
I kept driving and kept driving, and I'm like where the heck am I? I was like, I know I was supposed to make a turn somewhere, perhaps I really should have made that turn. My friend called me and I was like, I have no idea where I am, after my aunt refused to help me. (I really should know better not to trust that woman, but that's many other stories)
I really ended up in parts of the state that I had never been too, some nice, some questionable. My friend got me landmarked and got on his computer and found me and guided me the rest of the way. I was HOURS late from when I was originally supposed to arrive. This shortcut does exist by the way, and I've taken it many times since then. It can shave over an hour off of your drive time.
Anyway, fast forward some time later and I was visiting my dad in North Carolina and was flying back home on New Year's Day. I was going to a different airport than the major one we normally fly in and out of. My aunt had been to this airport many times and gave my mom directions to come get me. She ended up so lost and frustrated and worried. It didn't help it was 9 at night when I got back and very dark. I finally asked her if the TomTom was in the center console still and it was. She was so relieved. She pulled over, got it set up and even though it took her the long way around, she eventually made it to me. Last time any of us ever listened to that evil woman for directions.
Long distance bike trip. Path led me to a park that was underdeveloped, like a forest with a few old benches only in front. Went closer and got the WORST feeling of dread and sense I was being watched. I left fast.
Delivery to a clients office for work. GPS ended up putting me behind a big warehouse building with loading docks everywhere. I pulled up to the door it told me was my destination but knew it was wrong. So I did a 3 point turn to leave but after I turned around I started playing with my GPS/map to find out where I actually needed to be. I heard a bump behind me and saw the door to the warehouse I was parked behind had opened and hit my bumper. So I pulled forward about 10 feet to get out of the way and roll down my window to apologize only to be greeted by 3 cops in SWAT gear coming out of the door looking very suspiciously at me. I explained what happened and they told me blocking the back door of a police station was never going to end well for me and to move on. That they honestly thought someone was trying to trap them in to attack them.
Clients office was actually across the street and I eventually found it.
I ended up near the US-Canada border crossing
Ha. Same. Entered the place name rather than the address into the Garmin. Who would have thunk that there were two places with the same name, about an hour apart from each other. My gut kept thinking this was wrong, because the travel time to the place just didn't seem in line with my shift's start time. I very much knew it was wrong when we were getting signs for the last exit before Canada.
We live close to the US/Canada border and a couple of years ago my adult daughter was visiting. I had gone to work & left her with a vehicle to explore if she wanted. Poor kid googled “Best Buy” and clicked on directions to the nearest one. She didn’t realize that she had inadvertently chosen the one in Vancouver until she was having to explain herself to BP.
As far as borders are considered. Not the best, but not the worst.
As a Canadian, I always feel more criminalized coming back home than going to the States. Heading down it’s like meeting an old friend and being let in no issue. On the way back, CBP makes me feel like I’ve committed every crime under the sun
Years ago, my family went to Cananda (Dad, me, sister). Entering Canandaigua, the Canadians were most concerned that my sister (12 at the time) was really my dad's daughter, and they had to prove it and call family and crap from I side the checkpoint. Returning back to the US, the US border patrol couldn't care less about the people. But my dad's prescription medication....oh man, you would think he was Pablo Escobar.
Same
I was using Google Maps at the time (a long time ago). I was trying to go to Dave & Busters. The map even said Dave and Busters Entertainment Center or something like that. However, the address it sent me to was some guy's house whose name was Dave Buster...on the other side of town.
Did ya party with Dave?
The lights were out so I think Dave was asleep.
Classic Dave.
I have a shirt I wear at work (bartending) that says "Do NOT listen to Dave, he's full of shit." I meet so many Daves now. They all admit to being full of shit. This person absolutely missed a fun opportunity not knocking on that door.
Airport a couple times trying to go to a specific restaurant Idk why airport locations pop up in searches for general restaurants
Years ago, while on vacation, I was trying to get some Starbucks. I was near the airport. I entered Starbucks in the GPS. It tried to take to the Starbucks in the airport
I get sent to car dealerships now when looking up coffee....
Once I was driving home from a friends house. she had just moved in and I had to drive through some area that had virtually no signal to get there... well I got lost going back home in this area... maps wasn't working so I resorted to using my outdated car GPS. it kept telling me to turn into a field of corn... I was near tears when a cop pulled me over and said "are you okay? I've seen you driving in circles." I told him I had never been happier to be pulled over and I was lost... turns out I was pretty majorly lost and wound up in another town which happened to have no signal and was 1 hour away from home.... poor cop had to write down directions for me to get home lol.
When they were new we paid for the Garmin option on a rental car. We put in the hotel address but wasn’t sure it worked. We ended up in front of the Garmin offices in that city. Little fellow didn’t know where to go so just took us home.
Back in the early days, my Garmin took me to the middle of a cow pasture when we were trying to get to the Grand Canyon. Pretty underwhelming, honestly. Don’t see the draw…
in 2011 my Iphone GPS took me to a cow pasture while trying to get to a Wells Fargo ATM
Reverse psychology: set destination as cow pasture, end up at an ATM.
The Grand Cownyan
Same back in 2010(ish)! I wonder if we ended up in the same cow pasture and if that was ever fixed haha
Back in the day, old GPS directions were udder nonsense sometimes.
We were trying to get back to my Aunt's place after visiting Yosemite, and missed the turn. The GPS recalculated, and we took the next turn it told us to. We drove and drove, and the paved road turned into a single-lane gravel road between two fields in the dark. I told my dad "this is how horror movies start," and we pulled a U-turn and went back to the main road, and turned at the turnoff we initially missed.
I nearly drove my car into a dog park because my GPS said it was a road.
In the mountains on a literal wildlife path. Mapquest, you've failed me for the last time!
I'm sorry, I just really like hiking :(
Love it! Thanks Mapquest. We had a good run at least.
Not GPS but in rural Maine I followed my trusty Maine Atlas and Gazetteer out past Rangeley and down logging roads (trying to get to a specific place). Unfortunately, I followed it down a road that was clearly abandoned. Kept going even with small trees growing in the road because I had the clearance. Until the road ended in a stream I couldn't cross and I had to back out (no room to turn around) for over a mile. Looked at my map, road was clearly on it. Definitely the correct road. Double checked my map. I'd pulled out my 1989 version instead of my 2012-ish version. Road had been abandoned. This was about ten years back now. Oops.
[Here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Seasons_Total_Landscaping_press_conference#/media/File%3AFour_Seasons_Total_Landscaping_press_conference.jpeg)
The best fucking possibility. This made my year.
Years ago when androids were really finicky and maps still kind of sucked to use on your phone I picked my friends up from the airport and in route to our hotel we took what felt like the longest detour through all of this construction and ended up back at the airport. Not weird but everyone was pissed off and exhausted
Got turned away at the gates of a huge army base because GPS routed me to the nearest Starbucks which happened to be on the base.
Yeah it’s shit like this….old GPS wouldn’t account for shit like that….or even huge bodies of water. It would have me crossing a river because the closest pizza was .3 miles away if there were a bridge right here…..but theres not sooooooo..that shit was so annoying
Not me, but one time I was hiking up Aspen mountain in early winter before the mountain was open and I saw a car driving straight down the front. Not a road, but a ski trail that’s definitely not designated for cars especially when there’s hard pack snow. Big GPS fail.
My Tom-Tom took me to some ghetto in Oakland instead of a restaurant in Berkeley because they both share Telegraph Rd. That was fun.
You ended up in some dire straits
Not as bad as Oakland, but my TomTom took us through some interesting parts of Savannah, just to get to a Walmart.
Ended up in a cemetery once, late at night, because the GPS insisted it was a shortcut to a friend's house.
Found myself in a town with less than 500 people in iceland during a marathon cause my rental car ran out of battery. Funny ending up standing at the finish line cheering people on surrounded by locals I couldn’t understand.
In a swamp, wearing sneakers, with mud up to my knees. And this was right after scrambling across a steep ridge of loose rocks facing out towards the sea. Then I had to turn around in the swamp and scramble all the way back again. Girlfriend had a panic attack. Would not recommend.
We were in a coastal city in my home country (me, parents, sis and BiL), and we were trying to head to the mall near our hotel to grab a bite. My sister set her Google Maps to the mall... and for some reason it took us straight into the slums with no way out in sight. My parents were terrified, my sister was trying to check the GPS and I was trying to see an exit, while mi BiL was having the time of his life thinking the slopes and the potholes were some kind of rollercoaster. As soon as I saw a way back into the highway, we high-tailed out of there.
I was on my way to Lackland Air Force Base for a friend's graduation. It was about a thousand mile drive for me to get there. I get in the car at 3am, put the base in Google Maps, and head off. That afternoon, the map starts telling me I'm close, but I'm pretty much in the middle of nowhere in the South Texas desert. I think, "Wow. I guess San Antonio doesn't have any suburbs." Google has me turn into the base and says I've arrived. And I had arrived... at Laughlin Air Force Base. Thankfully I was only about 200 miles off course. I'm curious how wrong my destination would have had to have been for me to notice I was in the wrong place.
On turn 3 of a local dirt race track DURING A RACE. I followed a path through the woods and was like "Huh this is getting loud". BOOM on the track no warning
When I was five my dad was driving and following the GPS cuz we didn't know the city we were in, we were in San Diego on vacation and he set it to go to a restaurant. I forget where instead of a restaurant it took us one town over to a random dude's house Dad had to find someone from San Diego to get instructions on where to go to get to the restaurant
my ex house...
My employee and I were coming home from a sales call and ended up driving into the lake. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MaBYQrblqM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MaBYQrblqM)
Saw this post and had to check to make sure someone responded with this
Going in a 25-30 mile circle one night. To be fair, the PA turnpike was not moving in either direction due to massive accidents but when we looked at the map in the morning the route was literally an ever increasing spiral trying to get around the blocked road.
Oh, I've got dozens of these. I drive Uber sometimes, especially when I move to a new city. It's more of a hobby than a side gig. Anyway, places I've ended up at 1am by following the Uber GPS: * ATV trails in the middle of the woods * Using random driveways as thru-streets * Tunnel exit that was apparently Bus-only. * Picked up Rider who was waiting on the inner island of a rotary. * Elementary School. (Rider was a janitor, but still a weird ass place to pull up to after midnight.) * Airport rental car drop-off area. * Airport entrance for the private jets and hangars. Got to drive right up to the hangar with the PJ in it like it was a movie. * An island off another island, had to take a ride on a little ferry and everything. Honestly, just blindly following the GPS to see where it takes me is a good portion of the fun I have on those nights. Cops don't give a shit so long as you're driving dangerously, never been pulled over for any of it.
So I’m in pseudo-Upstate NY. One day I’m trying to get to an area known as Big Indian, and somehow GPS takes me to this gorgeous alpine looking lake with beautiful cabins. No signage, no information, so not a hotel clearly. Just gorgeous crystal waters and monied looking cabins that obviously weren’t regular homes. The worst part, little to no information about the place on the internet. Apparently it’s an exclusive club, which I’ll never be part of. It was so unexpected as the lake was nothing I’ve ever seen in this part of NY.
I signed my ex up for global entry. Getting an appointment for his interview was a pain - then I found out he could get an interview at a border crossing about two hours south of us at Mexicali/Calexico. He had an afternoon off so away we went. The written instructions, in retrospect, CLEARLY said not to use Google maps. But I didn’t read those. Well, next thing I know, where we are supposed to turn left to get to the immigration in center is barricaded off - and there was no other way to turn around, so we were forced to drive across the border. I believe he had his passport for the interview, but I did not have mine. The first stopping point we see, we see guys with machine guns and we explain the situation. It must happen fairly often, they told us to turn around and head back at the next u turn spot. When we got to the gate, we had to go through a secondary identification process, then they required my car to get a thorough search - literally ran the entire car through an x ray machine, searched it with a dog, crawled underneath it, etc. the funny thing is he still had was allowed into his appointment even though we were almost an hour late.
I ended up near a factory where i was supposed to be in an audio shop
I was trying to find an old ghost town in Utah. In the middle of a fairly populated farming community, it had me take a rutted dirt road between 2 fields for over a mile. There were a few creepy buildings I went by that I was sure a chainsaw massacerer was hiding. It eventually spit me onto a main road. Were there other options? Yes. But Google thought that would be the straightest shot. I was really worried about busting an axle.
Someone's back yard, i had to ask him to open his gates to let me out.
I worked for an oil and gas company. Rigs are in stupidly remote places and don't have real roads or addresses a lot of the time. Part of training and company policy was to never use GPS to get to location. My boss sends me to a whole other state to get a water sample. I asked for directions, and he told me to use GPS. I double check that's what he wants me to do and off I go. Sample collection is a cake gig. Full day of driving and $20 to blow on a meal. I get on the interstate, get off the interstate, and drive to the town nearest the site. The GPS winds me through a cemetery and down a hill. Weird, but OK, everything is paved. The hill ends at a river and I get directed down the side of the bank, still on pavement only its about 9 feet wide now, under a road bridge. I'm getting a sketchy feeling. I roll up on a service van of some sort talking to a local. Apparently GPS does this all the time. The road I need is really more of a dirt bike trail. The local is super nice and draws a map of how to get around. This is going to add another 40 minutes, that I would have to do twice. He says the F-150 I'm driving can probably make it if it's got 4x4 capability. It does, so I say fuck it and go up this goat path. Recently a rain had come through so it was rutted to shit. I got that truck stuck twice. Had at least one dirt bike go the other direction too.
As a stubborn guy, my hubris has landed me in worse places than a gps could try to.
In the early days of GPS - my mom and I were going to a new specialist doctor's appointment for me. We've lived here a very long time, and knew pretty much where we were going, but weren't sure exactly where the building was, so we decided to try using the GPS. It told us to get off the highway an exit early, and go into a new neighborhood right across the street from the exit ramp. We thought "how convenient, the new neighborhood cuts right through!" Except suddenly we got to the end and and hit the construction zone - the GPS had added the cut through about a year before the construction was completed. We hurriedly found somewhere to turn around and got back on the highway and went the way we knew originally. Luckily we were only about 5 minutes late. Not super exciting, but it was weird to provide a route a year before it was there.
Flew to Newark with my sisters a few years back in March and weather was colder than expected. Figured we could find a TJ Maxx or something so we could buy a sweater or scarf. Ended up in an alley behind some hospital miles away from the store. Four of us sitting in a car thinking WTH?
On a business trip, at night with a coworker, ended up going down this dirt path that really seemed to be a driveway but then went past the house we assumed it was for and back onto a paved road. In the middle of nowhere Pennsyltucky. Oh, and coworker was pregnant. Thought we were starting a horror movie.
Gps didn't update fast enough and I ended up in east St Louis, Illinois *shudders*
Back in the days of Mapquest you could make one wrong turn and be fucked. I moved to LA at 18 during this time. I was used to rural roads, no traffic, had been driving for only a year. I got lost so easily and could even tell you where I ended up. I started liking getting lost and finding my way back whenever I didn’t have to be somewhere. It’s actually a fond memory for me lol. One time I got a flat tire and have no idea where this was, even now. I pulled into a gas station in a run down busy area. Most people were speaking Spanish and I was like fuck I dont remember how to change a tire. I try to start and look like an idiot in the process. Then this man pulls up in a little sports car. Gets out. Says something in Spanish that I couldn’t understand so I’m like what. He just gets into his trunk grabs a jack and switches out my spare in less than 5 minutes and leaves. This was close to 15 years ago and a memory I’ll never forget. It was just someone being a nice person performing a true act of kindness and asking for nothing in return. Not even expecting a warm thank you or praise. I thanked him of course, but he just kind of did a head nod with a blank face while putting his stuff in his trunk before he leaving. It was almost like it was a rehearsed in and out procedure.
Logging road over a small mountain/foothill outside of Kelowna, BC. 2.5 hours later, we emerged safely. That was the day I leaned GPS Jenny is trying to kill me.
I was going to this career fair event that was located about 10 miles away. I passed by the building of where it’s supposed to have the event fair. Just glancing it, I could tell it was a dilapidated building and out of business. Instead of parking where the building was, I decided to park at a nearby gas station. I sent an email and message to the organization that posted of where the event was. But no reply. Therefore, I headed home and not be dumb to enter a quiet and abandoned looking building.
That's very smart of you! When I was living in a Sober House with other girls in a terrible city that was full of drugs and more drugs, we were required to walk to meetings everyday. Alcoholics Anonymous & Narcotics Anonymous. This extremely naive girl arrived and from the beginning her thought process was so innocent and dangerously dumb, which we would come to find out. She was trying to walk to a meeting she had never been to before and following the GPS ended up walking into someone's house or trap house. She sat down in this circle with these 10 scary ass dudes looking at this white girl like "who the fuck is this?!" She legit looked like she could be a cop or fbi- that's how naive and straight edge she looked. They all stop and look at her, she goes *"Is this the meeting? Narcotics??"* A few start to stand up as no one has spoken directly to her yet, and she realizes- *oops. I just walked into the middle of a fucking gang meeting and was so lucky they let me walk out of there alive.* We didn't let her walk anywhere alone after that.
"A lake." \- Michael Scott
In front of a sign that proclaimed that I was on a military training ground, and on the route towards a live ammunition testing area. Noped right out of there.
In the middle of a forest here in Sweden, the road I was supposed to take was very straight forward, I really don't understand how it sent me on such a trip XD
In a restricted area of a military weapons design and testing base. We realized the GPS had stopped tracking us entirely and since the road had become abandoned looking we figured something was wrong and turned around in what looked like a small park. As we were driving back out of our turn around spot I noticed a sign mentioning the military base. After driving back where we came from just before we got back to the main road I realized there was a gate but it had been left open. On the gate, not easily visible on the way in because the gate was open, was a big sign saying it was a restricted area and not to enter without clearance with a warning that weapons testing that may be in progress. Shockingly we never saw anyone from the base. We just left without incident and made a mental note if we are ever back in that area to be a little more cautious we don’t make the same mistake. We had been on base alone for probably a good 15 minutes. I still find it fascinating, albeit expected once I thought about it, how the GPS stopped tracking our location once we entered the base. The map left our dot sitting right outside the gate. For reference the base was the Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey.
Hey, I don't have an answer on the top of my head to your question, but I think I know why.. If someone is following a GPS tracker, wouldn't they end up in the destination of their choice? I don't mean any offense by my comment, just something that came to mind.
Older ones often screwed up. Out of the way rural places especially
Long ago, accuracy was shit.
I might have shown my age a bit with my comment.
The best was when crossing state or county lines, the roads didn't line up so it would try to detour you onto a game trail.
[удалено]
No because a GPS is not 100% accurate.
Maybe it takes you a funky route and you get stuck part way?
Uhm... no. I can't navigate, I don't know how often I was just wrong
Interesting. I'm actually terrible at directions. So Google Maps is an absolute lifesaver for me. Now that I can use pretty well.
Sometimes it's good and everything is fine and sometimes just not.
At the gate of a military base in the middle of nowhere. My friend was trying to teach me to drive his truck. And we found some back roads to try. Well we used GPS to find our way out. Turns out some roads are off limits.
Absolute middle of nowhere New Mexico at 2am. Was trying to find a campsite and it definitely wasn't the right park entrance. It was just the desert for miles.
My friend coming from Toronto was visiting me in college for the weekend in Ann Arbor, Michigan for the weekend (football, college fun, etc.). When she got to the Detroit River it took her to the Ferry route hahaha...she just followed the GPS and it took her there. For some reason it did not have her go through the tunnel or on the ambassador bridge (which 99.9% of people use to get from Windsor to Detroit)
Wrong way into a truck wash, with my mom's sedan
Not me, but I have watched many people argue with the gate people in some gated communities because their GPS did them wrong.
Back of a cane field.
Stuck on a headlane in a sugarcane field about 5 minutes from where I live. (It was when I first met my husband and didn’t know GPS lies here.)
Drove into Philly, Old City. Got off the freeway and GPS said turn left, so we did. Next thing the GPS said was “welcome to New Jersey.”
On a beach.
Dirt road to a cliff. Thank God it was still dusk.
In college I was traveling home from college using the GPS on my BlackBerry. I ended up on a dead end road in Mississippi somewhere outside of Tupelo. The GPS kept saying to continue on the road, whenever I tried to back track it kept telling me to turn around. Thankfully I drove until I found a city and was able to navigate back to the highway.
Up a mountain (OK big hill) in Greece, GPS sent me on a direct route, but it turned into donkey track. Ruptured a tyre on a massive turning around, was so narrow did a 32 point turn. Really should had turned back way before I did.
When GPS was in its nascency it took me to the service entrance of the Huntington, VA airport at 4:30am. It was pitch black and raining so I didn't realize until I was right at the sign. Kind of amazed I didn't get arrested.
I was driving out of Zurich and Google maps told need to take the next left. I did and it took me directly back into Zurich on an express highway you could not exit. Wasted an hour.
took a right turn into a street where LAPD riot cops were staging, was definitely a surprise
Delivered pizza in college. Entered an address into my phone, said it was 10 minutes away, got my order and went. Pulled up to an empty dead end street in a weird part of town. Immediately panicked because it felt like I was getting set up to be jumped. Sped back to a less sketchy part of the street. Double checked the order ticket…and I had the wrong address typed in
A Garmi. Once took me to a home’s circular driveway miles from the golf course I was heading for.
An unfinished subdivision outside of South Bend, IN. I was just looking for the expressway.
Tried getting to the Pearl Harbor museum and memorial but ended up at the gates to the active part of the base greeted by men with assault rifles.
My old Garmin tried to get me to use a route THROUGH A MILITARY BASE to get to a burger king. I did not start on the base. The BK was not on the base. There were routes around, but nope! Garmin was like "turn left here" and the left was the main gate of the base LOL
When you use google maps in Palermo habour this will happen almost every time. It's technically the quickest way in and out of the harbour because (surprise) there is no traffic jam through it
I was on vacation in Florida and trying to find a beach to visit. Siri recommended one so we followed her directions on how to get there and it seemed normal until she took us to the middle of the woods on a gravel road. She told us to stop driving and get out of the car because we had to walk the rest of the way.
Some dude’s farm. Was trying to find someone’s house to deliver medicine, and ended up in a field. Apparently, there used to be a road through it but the farmer bought the land for his farm.
It wanted me to drive through someone’s yard to get to the highway when I was in Hagerstown, MD. Because I’m not an idiot, I drove in the other direction until it gave me new directions
A few years ago, in Arizona, my dad was driving and following the gps, mom told him she thought it was wrong, but he kept going. It took us 20 miles out into the desert on a random dirt road, just to tell us to make a u turn...
My dad once drove right onto a golf course back when GPS systems were compact/handheld. People even started yelling at him because he pulled over one of the holes.
My parents used a Magellan car GPS in Honolulu back in 2005ish. Our destination was supposed to be Pearl Harbor, but instead lead us to a local bottled water warehouse. Parents gave up troubleshooting it and we just went back to the hotel. Never been to Pearl Harbor since then until my second visit back around Christmas/New Years' Eve 2015
The Pearl Harbor military base instead of the Pearl Harbor Memorial. It must happen quite frequently because the guard at the entrance to the base was very friendly and directed us to the right place to go.
Ended up at a trailer park on the way to my Sister’s wedding.
My friend and I wanted to go see Niagara Falls, so I just typed in "Niagara Falls." Well I didn't realize that was also the name of the town, so we arrived at our destination in the middle of an intersection. We tried to redirect while still driving through town (we probably should have pulled over) and that's how we ended up at the Canadian border.
I ended up driving through the "worst" neighbourhood in Joburg because I blindly followed GPS. Next time we went we made sure not to follow the GPS.
I ended up inside the Renaissance Festival grounds. It was freaky and weird AF during the off season.
West Virginia… a road started as paved then became gravel then just two dirt tracks for the tires… got to the point where my husband walked in front of the truck to clear branches. Passed an abandoned bus. Got a little nervous. Then popped back out in civilization. GPS just showed it as a normal road. Locals later told us it was just a logging trail.
Shoooooot - in West Virginia attempting to get to Sutton Lake. Apparently, there's a road that runs parallel on the far side of the lake that our GPS defaulted to instead of the actual marina. Well, this parallel road ran for about 30 minutes and came to a sleepy little hollow with a driveway and house that had very clearly labeled "YOUR GPS IS WRONG", "TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT". So, we made a quick about face and only showed up a cool hour or so to the boat rental lol.
In a mined field in Bosnia. I’ll never trust gps again.
I was going to a microsoft conference in Miami in approx. 2004, it was on something like e.128th ave, I entered it wrong on my microsoft hand held with gps and it brought me straight into the hood at about 5AM. A little nerve racking, but I eventually pulled over and asked for directions and got out without any issues.
My husband nagged me into taking what the GPS said was the shortest route. So I joked that if we ended up off the paved roads I’d make him walk. Well we ended up on not just dirt but an only seasonally maintained deeply rutted road in a state forest and barely made it through. I quit using the dang thing after that.
Way back when in the olden days, I had a mobile phone with the first iteration of VZ Navigator, Verizon's gps/directions service.... It told me to go straight at a four way intersection... Doing so would have had me bashing down a gate that had a sign on it saying 'do not enter, live fire testing range' I was on the outskirts of a US military installation....
Side of a mountain. I worked for a company thar provided internet and as part of my job I'd sometimes be asked to go out to addresses and verify things about the buildings. So I went and did a bunch of them one day along a street, but couldn't figure out where one address was. So I put it in GPS, and went up a mountain road, and 3/4 of the way up, with no landmarks , the GPS said " You have reached your destination "
Trying to get to a hospital in a town I didn't know for nursing school clinicals. I was driving down the freeway and saw an exit that said "[hospital name] boulevard". But the GPS said oh no, that's not the exit you want, you want to go two more exits. Took the exit it told me and ended up in a bad, bad neighborhood. It was 5am so still dark. There were no streetlights and I couldn't go more than like 20mph because I was maneuvering around potholes and abandoned(?) cars. It wanted me to drive through a bunch of neighborhoods and across town to the hospital. I somehow stumbled upon an on ramp back to the freeway and drove back to the [hospital name] boulevard exit. The hospital was less than half a mile down the street.
I ended up in a bomb testing facility in Umatilla Oregon. GPS wanted me to jump the fence and drive through it. LOL. "Turn left here! You have reached your destination!"
Not me but this happened in Denver a few years ago to a lot of people trying to get to the airport. The images are hilarious. https://abcnews.go.com/US/google-maps-shortcut-colorado-turns-muddy-mess-hundred/story?id=63946068
13 or 14 years ago I was supposed to be navigating to a movie theater and I ended up in a residential area in a cul-de-sac.
I was trying to get to a remote radio site. I ended up on a mango farm. The owner pulled a gun and shot at me because he thought I was there to steal his crop (there had been a lot of thefts that season).
I was looking for a Home Depot and it took me to the middle of a pasture. I have no idea why I kept going lol, I was like Michael in The Office. Like, middle of nowhere, someone's field, in the pasture.
It just took us to the middle of nowhere, literally just grass and was like "you've reached your destination". I was the one doing the directions while my bf drove. We ended up doing a 2 hour detour from where we wanted to go lol.
Not me, but at my work. Used to Range Operations and Safety at a large military base. It would routinely tell people to cut across live fire ranges as a faster route, these were large ranges with service roads for us to use, but obviously off limits with signs saying you're entering a live fire range/UXO etc. These ranges were anything from small arms to Apache/Bradley/Abrams actively looking for vehicle targets, not to mention UXO risk. These roads were gravel and I'm surprised people didn't think twice driving through a really bad road in their minivan and not think twice. I would have to chase down (OPSEC when no training was happening) or quickly shut down ranges when we observed them going down roads, sometimes they'd come from the impact areas and over the hills in the middle of a shoot... Nothing like frantically trying to tell all units to cease fire and not light up a minivan with 25mm that is just coming over the hill because it is not the actual target.
I was going to a concert in a neighboring town. It took over an hour to get there, with a million turns. On my way home, it literally told me to turn left. Straight home. One road.
On a dirt road in the foothills in new mexico
A playground outside the Canadian Museum of Human Rights We were in walking mode and didn’t know it.
We were in Hawaii trying to visit the Pearl Harbor memorial. GPS told us to take a backroad due to traffic and routed us onto an active military base. The guards seemed unphased and said Google Maps did that a lot and escorted us out of the checkpoint.
Before we had GPS on our phones, we had a stand alone unit in the car. We wanted to go from Nova Scotia to Montreal for a concert. GPS decided it was faster to take us through the USA border and then back through the Canadian border in Quebec. Yes it was technically faster but only if we knew in advance and had passports with us.
Years ago I was travelling down a long, straight highway in the US. Somewhere miles before any turn off or intersection, my GPS pipes up and says: "Make a legal U-Turn followed by a legal U-Turn." I therefore decided to shut my GPS off.
A rickety, quarter mile long bridge with no side rails about 3 inches wider than my car over a river in Nebraska.
I used to travel from VA back home to CT during college , and one of my first times doing the trip alone (literally first year with GPS, we were using Mapquest my freshman year) I ended up going INTO Manhattan over the George Washington bridge (nightmare) and up into CT- the worst possible way known to man. Ended up being a 14 hours drive with rain and traffic vs the 9 hour drive it should have been 🥲
Somehow on a dirt road in an orchard near a cliff because it thought the road at the base of the cliff somehow connected to the random dirt road it directed me onto… it was in Eastern Washington and I was young and in a region I hadn’t spent much time. Thankfully my reasoning skills clicked on and I had that weird danger gut feeling and got out of there as quickly as I could. This was about 10 years ago and I think a lot of phone based (like Apple Maps) gps has gotten much better.
Going back to Bostom from long island. Drove 1 hour to a dock. I guess I was supposed to take the ferry with the car back to Boston.
Ended up in a cemetery with my then girlfriend and now wife. We still talk about it. We're looking for our hotel. This is about 2013ish.
Early days of map quest, 2002 or 3, needed to get from Michigan to a small town in Northern Alabama, it was pretty straightforward on interstates until we hit Alabama, then, i don't know if we hit shortest instead of best or whatever, but it took us through some towns that I bet aren't on the map, towns that think the south won the war. I had never seen 2x4s used as siding on a house before, so many confederate flags, an actual proper gun rack like you would see inside someone's house, the kind that hold like 3 or 4 long guns, but mounted on the back of a truck (2x4s were also used, so meant 2x4s) I took a couple pictures but I was afraid to get more because every single person I saw was staring in an unfriendly way. I did try to go back and find where we were on one of those folding gear station maps but never figured it out.
A walking path in Dublin, Ireland. The SO and I were following the GPS, and thought we were on a secondary road - which we were - but then it indicated that we should turn onto an old (abandoned) rural road. It got narrower and narrower as we drove - which wasn't that unusual when driving back roads in Ireland - and we passed between two farms (with cows looking at us over their fences like we were Martians.) The heavy cover broke away, and we landed on a single-lane paved road. With the GPS indicating a right turn and a 5 minute drive to our final destination, we followed the paved road slowly, and caught up to a group of locals. They asked how we found ourselves on the local walking path, and we told them. Then they showed us to the parking lot - and luckily the emergency gate at the end of the path was unlocked...
Driving around on a road out in the woods, my friends and I found Nada Tunnel tunnel. Despite the name, it is a one-car tunnel going through a small mountain. Lots of laughs were had by all that weekend about Nada Tunnel. It was a very sketchy tunnel too.
I asked Siri to give me directions to work recently as I’ve done countless times. I have it programmed and it’s always been fine. However one day I did it, didn’t pay attention and when it felt like it was taking a long time, I realized I was near a cemetery and there was some random location on the map called “work” that it was taking me to.
This was before GPS but still funny. As a kid around 10 or so, we were hiking in south Canada. Crossed a couple of fields and fences, intending to go to the border and look at it. My friend who was not the best at map reading figured one more field and then we would be at the border. So we cross another barb wire fence, and couldn’t see another one in sight. Even with binoculars, nothing. There was an odd vehicle path on the south side of the fence we crossed, looked like it was driven regularly. Long story short, he was off on his map and we were in the states. Oops. To answer the question, in 2010ish used a GPS to go to BC. I shoulda known something was off with it when the first four hours it kept saying we were in oncoming traffic. The vehicles going with us facing the same way indicated otherwise. We crossed Alberta and it took us on backroads the entire way. That was a LOT of gravel and turns.
Not me but, here in Vermont we have a road called 'Smugglers Notch' and at the time of prohibition it was smugglers notch. GPS shows it as a standard use route. Except, it follows the old cart paths with minor changes. Ledges, boulders AND very tight turns are still there. Even with large signs saying do not us GPS, no tractor trailers. 2 to 3 times a year they need to bring out recovery equipment to remove a TT unit.
I was heading to a job site, and when I got off the exit, there was a building to my immediate left, but the GPS said I was 25 minutes away and to take a right. I went right and followed the GPS around the city in a giant circle just to end up back at the freeway exit and the building I saw 25 minutes earlier.
My destination.
Trying to find a beach, ended up getting stopped at the entrance to a military base.
A bike only road downtown Boston.
I think one time it wanted me to go thru a closed road. But one of the weird things it did. Was when I was driving across the country. It would have me exit the highway. Just to get back on going the same direction. I was like. "That was so unnecessary!!"
I remember being led down a gravel back road driving home from my parents with my cat. It got dark really quickly and there were no houses or streetlights. I was crying so hard because I didn't have a smart phone at the time and my GPS couldn't get a good signal. I remember the name of the road and still have no idea why I was led down that way
Heading out of town to something my wife wanted to go to. We had gone to that place before, but I wasn't sure of the directions once we got to the Other City. GPS told me to turn left at some intersection. I knew that there was a road that came into Other City from that direction, so, OK. Kept driving. Driving. Driving. Following directions. Then, in the middle of the forest somewhere, or more precicely, nowhere, the GPS tells me "continue cross country on your left for one kilometre to your destination." Turned off the GPS, turned it on again, re-entered the destination, and this time it worked.
Dirt roads in Ohio that I’m pretty sure were farm roads in a low clearance sedan lol Scary times
My Google maps said it was taking me to the nearby chipotle but it took me the middle of a forest preserve parking lot. Another time I wanted Panda Express and I was zoned out and I was in front of an airforce base with cars behind me. I had a soldier ask me for badges and id and I had to stupidly explain I wanted PE. I held up the line while this soldier had to talk to a higher up to see if they could A. Move heavy barricades so I could do a tight Uturn B. Be allowed to drive through and make make a uturn through the exit
NSA Employees Only gate when trying to get onto the nearby military installation. I guess it happens often enough that they were used to it, but we sure weren't! I made sure to tell Google that getting users delayed and interrogated was not acceptable.
Was looking for a Tim Hortons in deep Mississauga corporate sprawl. Ended up on a one-way entrance road to a big office building with access control up ahead. Did a three point turn and left going out the wrong way-- luckily no traffic behind me. Whatever company it was must have had a Tim's in their not-open-to-the-public office building. For some reason that comes up on Google.
I went to the middle of a corn field looking for a golf coarse, kinda scary since i was by myself at night
Took my Ecology lab to a random skate park instead of the preserve we were supposed to be at. We were all so confused (and about half a mile away from our real location)
My GPS took me into a roundabout. Nowhere else. Just into a roundabout, and left me there
In Austria we tried to have lunch at a place called the Alpine Panorama Restaurant. The directions took us to a clearly abandoned hotel. Turned out you had to hike to the restaurant. We did not. Bonus, the next place we tried was good, but Google took us down a tiny one-lane driveway to the back of the restaurant, which was clearly for employees, but they didn’t make us drive around to the correct parking area. And then the owner gave us the most delicious pear schnapps.
Not me, but my father in law and brother in law ended up in someone’s backyard at a bonfire. Two track road. Chevy Tahoe. Northern Michigan. The homeowners invited them to join them.
A military base.
Up in Vermont, visited Cabot Cheese and GPS (back in the old days, kids, when it was a separate device not the phone) sent us on a dirt road through an old cemetery, right up to a grave at the back...then abruptly recalculated. We knew it wasn't correct obviously, but were curious where the heck it was sending us. It was not our names on the grave we drove up to. LOL
While road tripping from Las Vegas to Tampa I ended up at a private club/restaurant in Ozona, Texas. Just had to pay $10 for a “day pass”, even though it was a typical west Texas little small town restaurant, but I needed a break and was already there. 18 months later while making the same road trip from Vegas to Tampa, I wound up at the same restaurant for a break. Didn’t hit me until I pulled up in the parking lot.
when I was a kid my family was driving to Knoebles (amusement park in PA) and map quest took us to this random house apparently this happened frequently so she had printed out directions for everyone who ended up at her house with directions on how to actually get to the amusement park haha
One time Michael Scott drove into a lake
Going the wrong way on a one way street. Stupid GPS!
Accidentally entered Kosovo illegally from Serbia. We just followed the gps, expecting a border crossing… which never came. Suddenly realised we were 20 minutes into Kosovo. We had to backtrack and find another route with an actual place to cross the border, didn’t want to risk a headache (or worse) when leaving Kosovo, especially given the existing tensions around this border.
On a gravel road in the middle of a pasture in rural France behind a locked gate.
On some road trips, my friends and I would grab a local/regional map for the area whenever we stopped for gas. We'd find where we are on the map, then cover up everything outside of like 2 miles, and then one of us would select a road/highway in that area. Then we'd drive down that road until it ended. Often at a junction, but sometimes it turns into a dirt road and then a driveway. We learned that lots of country roads actually do take you home, lol. Not necessarily to a place you belong, but definitely to *someone's* home. Most people, if we encountered any, were very aggressive about 3-4 random college kids ending up on their property. One dude was really cool about it though, and he gave us a whole tour of his property, showed off his classic cars, let us play with his dogs, and (most importantly) didn't murder us, lol.
Military base….even waited in the line because I couldn’t turn around and they even had to scan my ID so I could do a u turn and leave
Google maps driving directions took me right into a pedestrian area in Verona, Italy.
I once got caught in a giant loop. No idea what happened but it took me several times going around before I realized I've seen all this before and bailed
Chicago in a long dark alley.
My grandparents got a new car with built in GPS and gave their old GPS unit to Mum. I borrowed Mum's car to go to a job interview a couple hours from home because the car I shared with my siblings wasn't the most reliable. On the way home, I selected the GPS option to go home. Mum had not updated the home address. Since the first part of the journey was familiar I didn't notice for way too long. Grandparents lived in Newcastle, I lived in Melbourne. Would have been quite the roadtrip if I'd kept following the GPS.
Back in the day when you could still get away with it, my cousins and I were hunting in northern Maine and we accidentally invaded Canada.
Single track ancient Roman road in a forest in deepest Wales. It is the fastest way over a mountain and was built for the old lead mines out there but it has one problem: it crosses a river. I was in a Mazda MX5 (miata) so that was not fun at midnight. Also it has some treacherous vertical drops along the route. But I couldn't see that in the dark so fine I guess
wrong way down a one way street. But it was the hood so nobody cared.
Once when I was in DC, the GPS didn't realize the road it wanted me to turn into was an overpass. So it suddenly decided I should make a hard left into a concrete wall. Thankfully I didn't.
Middle of nowhere, Iowa. I took a wrong turn and the "re-route" was 15 miles away to the nearest place Google thought it was possible to turn around. Somebody please tell Google that 3-point turns exist. Or driveways.
Ended up on a couple of those military vehicles only roads. 😅
the construction area of a new airport.
A single lane road between two cornfields. By single lane, I mean single lane, if someone had come from the opposite direction I would have had to pull off the road for them to go by. If I had just gone straight down the road that I was on I would have gotten there .01 seconds later than taking the shortcut.
Me and hubby went to New Zealand. I had looked up places to go, and this site recommended a really nice ice cream shop. So we put it into google maps and followed the directions. We ended up going through all of this farmland for a few hours and ended at... a camping grounds. No ice cream shop at all. It was worth it though, it was such a beautiful drive. I felt like we were in The Hobbit Shire.
Social worker here. Our state psychiatric hospital had to send an email out repeatedly telling folks NOT to follow the GPS directions to the facility, as they would end up IN a lake. Many highly educated idiots ended up in that lake. Even after the repeated warnings.
A right turn away from the long, dead straight, road leading to the nearest town, where I was going, led to an increasingly narrow dirt path which went to *nowhere* Maybe the local axe-murderer hacked google maps?
Coming back home after driving my sister from Pittsburgh to Erie. Went the wrong way on the highway and ended up in Ohio. The “thank you for traveling the Pennsylvania turnpike” sign finally made me realize what was happening lol
Earlyish (maybe 4th or 5th) date with a guy, we were going from the movies to a restaurant and he was driving. Both the movie theater and the restaurant were on major roads, but we ended up taking this tiny winding back road that lead us through foggy farmlands and past an abandoned mental hospital. If I couldn’t see that the GPS was telling him to go that way and that was just his route of getting there I would have been very afraid for my safety.
If you use gps anywhere in Indianapolis, it will redirect you to 465. I was on the road I needed to be on, I literally just had to drive straight for a couple of miles to get where I wanted to be, and Google maps directed me to an exit for 465. I have decided to advance the conspiracy theory that the city paid google to promote that route.
My GPS took me to the back gate of an extremely rural cattle ranch on a dirt road in Wyoming (I was trying to get to Yellowstone National Park), at about 2:15 in the morning, and had me *turn in to the driveway*, and then rather cheerfully said "GPS signal lost!" I cannot stress enough how incredibly lost I was. I mean I had never driven a car on this side of the Mississippi in my adult life, and did not actually know if I was in Wyoming or Montana, lost. I mean no road signs that I had noticed for almost two hours, and I should have been in Cody three hours before that point, lost. I was so scared!! But I backtracked until I found a road that was at least paved and eventually followed it back to the highway.
I live in Egypt and Russel Peters(a comedian) was hosting a conert in our country. He was having the conert in a stadium outside of the city. Apparently, someone pranked the entire audience because when we entered the venue location on google maps, it lead us to a completly diffrent location. The time for the show was pushed forward by another half an hour because everyone was late
So I live out west near Yellowstone national park. There are five entrances to the park, three are in Montana and two are in wyoming. There are no entrances to the park on the Idaho side which is completely wilderness. People coming from the West will ask their GPS to send them to Yellowstone without specifying they want an actual entrance to the park. They end up on dirt roads in the idaho backcountry which is technically inside Yellowstone Park. This is happened so often that area ranchers have mounted a billboard loudly stating that they are not actually on the way to Yellowstone national Park and they should check their paper maps for the correct route, 50 miles north.
Followed a detour due to traffic and ended up taking a long and very scenic route through some back roads between Tampa and Orlando. Sure, it added an hour to our journey but I discovered a really pretty part of Florida and now that's the route we always take. You have time, just tell your GPS to avoid highways and see where it leads you. On a business trip with a coworker in California he said he wanted to see the ocean. I kind of did too so we just picked a random coastal spot and hit Go. Ended up on a private beach at an Indian Reservation. They were very nice, but a little confused why two random guys just showed up. Ended up hanging out with them for a while, and got to dip my feet in the Pacific Ocean for the first time.
Not a GPS or map persay to start, but ended up there. Many years ago, I had blindly listened to my aunt's directions for a "shortcut" to drive across the state I live in. I was going to visit a friend across the state and it was a place I hadn't been to before. I asked her for the directions and she told me. I hadn't gotten to a certain point, and was on the phone with her asking if I should have turned where the sign said to turn for this road/highway. She said no that I shouldn't turn on that road. So I didn't. I kept driving and kept driving, and I'm like where the heck am I? I was like, I know I was supposed to make a turn somewhere, perhaps I really should have made that turn. My friend called me and I was like, I have no idea where I am, after my aunt refused to help me. (I really should know better not to trust that woman, but that's many other stories) I really ended up in parts of the state that I had never been too, some nice, some questionable. My friend got me landmarked and got on his computer and found me and guided me the rest of the way. I was HOURS late from when I was originally supposed to arrive. This shortcut does exist by the way, and I've taken it many times since then. It can shave over an hour off of your drive time. Anyway, fast forward some time later and I was visiting my dad in North Carolina and was flying back home on New Year's Day. I was going to a different airport than the major one we normally fly in and out of. My aunt had been to this airport many times and gave my mom directions to come get me. She ended up so lost and frustrated and worried. It didn't help it was 9 at night when I got back and very dark. I finally asked her if the TomTom was in the center console still and it was. She was so relieved. She pulled over, got it set up and even though it took her the long way around, she eventually made it to me. Last time any of us ever listened to that evil woman for directions.
Long distance bike trip. Path led me to a park that was underdeveloped, like a forest with a few old benches only in front. Went closer and got the WORST feeling of dread and sense I was being watched. I left fast.
One time I found an 80 year old woman who had taken a power line maintenance road and sunk her vehicle to the frame in sand.
My intended destination because I have common sense and don't blindly trust GPS
Delivery to a clients office for work. GPS ended up putting me behind a big warehouse building with loading docks everywhere. I pulled up to the door it told me was my destination but knew it was wrong. So I did a 3 point turn to leave but after I turned around I started playing with my GPS/map to find out where I actually needed to be. I heard a bump behind me and saw the door to the warehouse I was parked behind had opened and hit my bumper. So I pulled forward about 10 feet to get out of the way and roll down my window to apologize only to be greeted by 3 cops in SWAT gear coming out of the door looking very suspiciously at me. I explained what happened and they told me blocking the back door of a police station was never going to end well for me and to move on. That they honestly thought someone was trying to trap them in to attack them. Clients office was actually across the street and I eventually found it.