Court rejects 'GPS made me do it' argument

It appears that, strangely, some BMW drivers are actually submissive.

In what may be the first case of its kind, Robert Jones was found guilty this week of what they call in the U.K. "driving without due care and attention" for daftly following the orders of the soothing voice of his GPS when the more urgent voice attached to his brain cells might have suggested he, um, think.

You may be rendered temporarily numb, when you hear the details of this story, to discover that Jones delivers cars for a living.

You see, when Jones' GPS suggested he drive down a narrow, unpaved, cliffside lane, you might have imagined, given that he is an experienced driver, that he would have experienced a little doubt.

You might have also imagined that bears only use lavatories in large country homes.

Does the small print say, "Please disengage your brain"?

(Credit: CC Cpchannel/Flickr)

According to the Daily Mail, Jones kept on going until his car made the intimate acquaintance of a wire fence and became stuck at the edge of a drop of some 100 feet.

The prosecutor, Waseem Raja, seemed to foster a certain glee in describing Jones' actions.

"The path was not designed for motor vehicles, yet Mr. Jones slavishly continued to follow the satnav system to the point where his eyes and his brain must have been telling him otherwise to such a degree he was not exercising proper control of the vehicle," Raja told the court.

For his part, Jones offered the court a stirringly self-aware defense: "I might have been an idiot for taking the wrong road or carrying on, but I have not driven without due care or attention."

Unfortunately, the police officer who first appeared at the scene in Todmorden, West Yorkshire, chatted with the farmer upon whose land Jones had strayed. The farmer told him he wouldn't even take his horses down the path.

Jones, however, chose to take his considerable horsepower down there because his Tom Tom stood over him in tight leather garb brandishing a whip.

Oh, when will humanity ever learn to think for itself?

[mrcjacobs]

The ultimate punishment for his stupidity would have been for the fence to give way and for him to plummet to his death. That would have been Darwinism at it's best.....

[Stormspace]

I don't know. when I first got my TomTom I followed into places that might have been considered questionable. (Dirt Roads and such) More times than not the way was a valid shortcut. Sometimes however TomTom would lead you down a proposed roadway that ended up dead ending in a field. I'd say that a novice user of navigation devices has to gauge the device themselves and develop a level of trust with it so that they know when the proposed route might not be safe.

I know Tom Tom is very bad about giving you an "updated" map that undoes the correct centerline data, only to be replaced with 40 year old WSGS centerline data and when called they take no responsibility for the mistakes.

[fredtheviking]

In the face of a story like this, can anyone really say that stupid warning labels are really unnecessary?

[amadensor]

Best reply I have seen in a while. Truth often hurts.

[drhamad]

Yes... because the stupid warning label didn't help anyway, so why bother with it?

[Dalkorian]

Do stupid people *READ* stupid warning labels?

[Renegade Knight]

Yes. Do you think the stupid actually comprehend the warning labels let alone read them? They are placebo's for smart laywer.

[WDS2]

At least he wasn't talking on his cell phone. Or wait...

[dissent3125]

I'm just waiting to hear that he plans on suing Tom-Tom.

[atomD21]

I don't know... he's British, and litigation is the national sport over here in the US, so he may just suck it up and realize he's dumb.

[Slep]

How much do you want to bet, this guy now tries to sue Tom-Tom and wins? It may be us that are laughing now, but this dude could end up getting the last laugh if he does the societal norm and tries to pass the blame on to the satnav maker.

[markdoiron]

Maybe in the U.S., but I don't think suing will go far in the U.K. --mark d.

[zyxxy]

Be careful with your 'never in the U.K.' reply. You have some great libel laws over there that just crack us up to no end.

[Seaspray0]

Hmmm... stunt driver for Top Gear? How hard can it be?

[tektaktyks]

i say this road should not be included in the directions,gps company should make sure the roads are safe,i v heard a story about a guy driving into a lake thx to his gps directions(driving at night),If we need a warning about a possible child drowning in a bucket, we need a warning about a dangerous road even more if people are using gps,ok?

[E B]

I got a rental car with a GPS, and drove in a strange city. Guess what -- when the directions don't make sense or appear to be safe, you just don't follow them. You do what looks safe, and you hear the GPS say "recalculating," and then it pops up with new, sane directions. Simple! Easy! Self-evident!!!

It's not the GPS's job to drive the car. It's the driver's job. Do your job.

[tektaktyks]

its not about me or you but there is a lot of people who are clueless,i had this one gf that was an excellent driver,but i had many gf's and i cant say the same thing about any other of them...

[kingsnoofer]

If the one giving the advice was a person in the passenger seat, reading from a map, he would have said they were daft to direct him down such a road. But for some reason since it was an electronic device he followed it's instructions blindly. If he is so completely moronic as to blindly follow instructions which obviously put him in danger he should have been removed from the gene pool as mrcjacobs suggested. I am so sick of people complaining and blaming everyone else but themselves when they do something stupid.

My gps tells me to continue for X kilometres before turning down X road. Does that mean I should ignore all stop signs, lights, and other vehicles between me and my next turn? The gps said to keep going.
I...must...keep...going...ignore...all...other...distractions...gps...says...go...straight...must...keep...going...must...keep...going...ignore...child...under...tires...gps...says...go...says...go...says...go

@tektaktyks - Should all dangerous roads be removed from every map too? Should they be drawn in some eye-attracting bright yellow? Why should we work so hard to protect a mind that is so obviously oblivious to the wire fence in front of them or the lake rapidly approaching? Anyone who has that complete lack of observation skills should not be driving in the first place. If you turned down a road that was so rough that "The farmer told him he wouldn't even take his horses down the path" AND kept going despite the alarms going off in your head telling you it's unsafe wouldn't you stop to re-evaluate your route and question the one provided by your gps unit?

[charlie_d]

This guy's an idiot, no doubt, but TomToms do send you down some strange roads. I was once instructed to merge onto a major highway via a State Police access road. I didn't realize it was a State Police road until I was dumped immediately onto the highway. Not cool.

[Kev_Orng]

The other day, my dad's GPS tried to make him do a U-turn over a grassy median. We laughed at it. When we passed the point where the GPS thought he should have drove up over the median, the GPS said "recalculating" and promptly suggested another point where it wanted us to cross the median.

At that point, we turned it off. He might not know how to get to my new house, but I do.

The point is, normal people don't blindly follow the directions of machines. Those that do are the kind of people who fall for phishing scams, hit rocks with their boat, or insist that its supposed to be sunny when it's clearly not. They wonder why their bowl of cornflakes doesn't have strawberries in it, like it does on the box.

You live in a world of suggestions, use them to help you make your decisions, but make your own decisions.

[jaxstephens]

"You live in a world of suggestions, use them to help you make your decisions, but make your own decisions."

Love that thought; very eloquently expressed.

[Seaspray0]

Or, I could take a poll from the voices in my head....

[lkrupp]

And these people actually vote sometimes. No wonder we are in the fix we are.

[tektaktyks]

exactly.

[celticbrewer]

LOL. You mean the people who take direction from electronic devices (TV) and don't think about what they're doing. Yeah, that sounds like the majority.

[goblynn1013]

Our GPS inevitably directs us to turn left in our town square--where left turns aren't allowed. Using this driver's judgement, I should be able to make that turn and be held blameless if I'm involved in an accident.

Whenever using a nav system, proper judgement isn't suspended. Driving in an unfamiliar area? Your GPS isn't a valid excuse for disregarding traffic signs--or common sense.

[bhartman35]

I think this particular guy was too much a slave to the directions the GPS was giving him, but it needs to be remembered that people use these systems because they [i]don't[/i] have any idea where they're going. If you're driving in the dark, you might not be able to see some hazard that would be obvious in the daytime, and because you don't know where you are, it would be easy to make a mistake you'd never make if you knew where you were, or it was daylight.

All I'm saying is that it's the GPS manufacturer's job to make sure that the data they provide is safe to follow. They shouldn't have to be responsible for someone crossing a median or driving over a cliff (at least, under any set of circumstances I can think of), but it's unreasonable to expect someone to know where a dirt road leads them, or that there's not some alternate route to get to their destination.

[Dalkorian]

NO. It's the drivers job to maintain a safe and sane speed of the vehicle. It's the drivers job to control what the car is doing. If it's dark, maybe you should turn on your headlights and slow down. Especially when you have no idea where you are or where you're going. Most especially when you decide to leave the pavement (yes, YOU decided to take that dirt road, so YOU are responsible for that action).

To properly use a GPS unit, you must first be smarter than the GPS unit. If it ever outsmarts you, it's time to shred your license and take the bus.

[VisionAforethought]

Dumb Dumb?

[KevinK]

My Tom Tom is constantly giving me bad advice in downtown Boston, but I ignore the obvious mistakes and it recalculates. In general it is pretty helpful but I have to exercise some judgement based on my knowledge of the locality. When I am traveling on unfamiliar territory I refer to map first and use information from that to modify the Tom Tom route when it is mapping my travel route, then I check it to make sure it is mapping the expected route - then I do not have to worry as I drive about it getting me into trouble. A little extra work to be sure, but the GPS is not infallible - it only knows where you are and where you want to go - generally the algorithm will map the shortest route by default whether or not that involves traveling a super highway, good secondary roads, a logging road, a cow path or..

[Dalkorian]

People need to escape this mentality of "it told me to!" and start thinking along the lines of "it's making a suggestion; does it make sense?". Why people have trouble understanding this escapes me, it seems stupidly obvious. The GPS isn't the driver and can't see anything so it can't be responsible for anything.

Maybe I should start an experiment and randomly start telling people I see walking on the sidewalk to drive off a cliff, just to see how many of them run to their cars and kill themselves driving off cliffs.

Stupid is as stupid does. To properly use a GPS unit, you must first be smarter than the GPS unit.

[nixermac]

I landed up in the middle of a farm (obviously there was the dirt road). There was a road sign when i entered the dirt road. It was well into the night and I didn't realize that it was a dirt road till I was well into it for some distance. Thankfully I was on a 4x4. My spouse was not too amused at the fact that the road did not have any lights. I believe that I should have sued Magellan. They have such an obsolete map system that the roads displayed are antique. I live in "sue happy USA".

Life goes on and I have learnt not to trust the GPS unit as much as my wit and keep my humor when I take the freaking wrong road.

I don't blame Mr. Jones. He must have assumed that the unit was taking the best short route.