Nearly 100 drivers followed a Google Maps detour -- and ended up stuck in an empty field

[Eugene]

Source: CNN

Nearly 100 drivers followed a Google Maps detour -- and ended up stuck in an empty field

By Michelle Lou, CNN
Updated 0032 GMT (0832 HKT) June 27, 2019

(CNN) — Technology isn't always foolproof, as about 100 Colorado drivers learned when Google Maps offered them a supposedly quick way out of a traffic jam.

A crash on Peña Boulevard, a road leading to Denver International Airport, prompted the app to take drivers on a detour on Sunday.

But it was too good to be true.

The alternate route took drivers down a dirt road that rain had turned into a muddy mess, and cars started sliding around.

Some vehicles couldn't make it through the mud, and about 100 others became trapped behind them.

-snip-

Read more: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/26/us/google-maps-detour-colorado-trnd/index.html

[dawg day]

1. I knew it! I always argue with my GPS-

while of course following its every command.

I have never forgotten a Law and Order episode, back when data was put on CDs, where a murderer killed his victims by hacking into a map-program CD and changing the directions so that they were led off a cliff or into a river (more likely that, in NYC... I don't remember the details!).

Anyway, if someone really wanted to cause even more chaos in America, that would do it-- mess with our map programs.

[Blues Heron]

2. Brain or digital - you kind of have to choose

which one to use. It's either or as we're finding out more and more.

[Siwsan]

3. We had two major "WTF???" sets of directions from OnStar, last weekend.

One sent us to a parking lot, no where near where we were intending to go. Another set had us traveling down what can only be described as wagon wheel ruts, through heavy brush and pretty much a forest. We finally got to our destination and immediately spotted a sign that pointed us to a main road, to get back to where we had originally started the journey.

People laugh at me but when I'm planning a trip, I always have maps, just in case.

[Kali]

4. this happens every time there is a long backed up wreck on I 10

idiots following bad electronic advice drive MILES down a bad dirt road only to have to go back the way they came...usually about the time the traffic starts moving again. I need to get a couple of signs made that say "your GPS and Google are full of shit, this road is PRIVATE and does not go through"