Photo: CarToq
While navigation apps have evolved substantially in the last decade, they’re still not at a point where they can be considered 100 percent accurate.
In other words, while they do their job beautifully most of the time, taking everything they say for granted all the time is definitely not recommended.
A family of tourists driving across India from Munnar to Alappuzha learned the whole thing the hard way after their Toyota ended up in a river.
The incident happened, according to the local media, because the driver blindly followed the instructions provided by Google Maps. So when the navigation app told the driver to go straight, and the river was the only thing ahead, the man behind the wheel entered the water stream, because of course.
All passengers escaped unhurt after the locals helped them get out of the car, but the Toyota Fortuner needed a lorry to pull it out of the river.
More often than not, people blame the navigation app for such incidents, but in reality, the person behind the wheel is the one in charge of deciding where to go next.
This is precisely why you shouldn’t trust navigation apps blindly, especially when driving in regions you haven’t explored before. In the past, some drivers ended up being sent by navigation apps on drivers that clearly weren’t suitable for their cars, and yet, they still followed the recommended route, eventually ending up in the middle of nowhere with nobody around to help them.
If anything, the guidance provided by navigation apps should only be a recommendation and nothing more. If a specific route that the likes of Google Maps tell you to follow doesn’t look like a good idea, you’d better stay on the main road, even if this means you’ll be five minutes late to the destination.
Fortunately, nobody was injured in this new incident, and the locals have also installed chains to make sure no other car ends up in the river in the future.
A family of tourists driving across India from Munnar to Alappuzha learned the whole thing the hard way after their Toyota ended up in a river.
The incident happened, according to the local media, because the driver blindly followed the instructions provided by Google Maps. So when the navigation app told the driver to go straight, and the river was the only thing ahead, the man behind the wheel entered the water stream, because of course.
All passengers escaped unhurt after the locals helped them get out of the car, but the Toyota Fortuner needed a lorry to pull it out of the river.
More often than not, people blame the navigation app for such incidents, but in reality, the person behind the wheel is the one in charge of deciding where to go next.
This is precisely why you shouldn’t trust navigation apps blindly, especially when driving in regions you haven’t explored before. In the past, some drivers ended up being sent by navigation apps on drivers that clearly weren’t suitable for their cars, and yet, they still followed the recommended route, eventually ending up in the middle of nowhere with nobody around to help them.
If anything, the guidance provided by navigation apps should only be a recommendation and nothing more. If a specific route that the likes of Google Maps tell you to follow doesn’t look like a good idea, you’d better stay on the main road, even if this means you’ll be five minutes late to the destination.
Fortunately, nobody was injured in this new incident, and the locals have also installed chains to make sure no other car ends up in the river in the future.
Google News