5% Discount Coupon: Unknown Tentsile
Our dependence on technology has displaced common sense, especially if this embarrassing error is any indication.
IT’S official, we rely too much on technology.
In years past motorists were at the mercy of road maps, sign postings and the view out their windshield. These days, we have a computer with a selection of ethereal yet authoritative voices to tell us which turn to take.
But as a 23-year-old Canadian woman found out, that method doesn’t always pan out so well.
According to the Toronto Sun, the woman was following a route on her car’s GPS while driving in the dark on a foggy night in Ontario when it directed her to drive onto a boat launch, and she ended up in a lake.
Despite the vehicle becoming completely submerged in the icy water the woman was able to wind down her window and escape without any injury, according to the police report.
“She’s in really good spirits,” Constable Katrina Rubinstein-Gilbert told the paper. “Of course a little embarrassed, but taking it all in stride.”
There’s no shortage of people claiming that our growing dependence on technology has displaced common sense, and the latest incident will no doubt give credence to that thought.
It’s certainly not the first time GPS navigation has led drivers astray.
In 2011, a group of young women drove their SUV into a lake near Seattle — they blamed the GPS.
In 2012, a group of Japanese tourists visiting Australia decided to follow their GPS into the Pacific Ocean. In that case, Yuzu Noda, 21, told the Redland City Bulletin that she was listening to the GPS and “it told us we could drive down there”.
Last year a woman was burned alive in a fiery crash in Chicago after her husband drove off a ramp to a demolished bridge by apparently following the GPS navigation.