Following GPS, Man Drives Van Up Swiss Mountain, Gets Stuck

Most people probably wouldn't drive their cars off a cliff just because their GPS system told them to do it. Driving off-road and up a mountain, on the other hand, is an entirely different story.

That's exactly what 37-year-old Robert Ziegler recently did, when his van's GPS system directed him up some ruggedly mountainous terrain in Bergün, Switzerland. Although Ziegler had his suspicions about the route, his navigation system didn't tell him to turn back until his van was hopelessly stuck along a narrow path. "I kept hoping each little turn would get me back to the main road," Ziegler tells Metro.co.uk. "In the end, it told me to turn around, but, of course, I couldn't by then."

Eventually, both Ziegler and his van were airlifted from the Swiss mountain by a helicopter and an awe-struck team of rescue workers. "He says he didn't see any footpath signs but he must be a fair driver to get that far up a glorified goat track," a fire service spokesman says. While following a satellite navigation system up a mountain may not be quite as moronic as, say, a pedestrian following Google Maps onto a major highway, Ziegler's saga stands as further proof that drivers tend to take GPS directions as gospel -- even when they make no sense, whatsoever.

Source: http://www.switched.com/2010/09/29/following-gps-man-drives-van-up-swiss-mountain-gets-stuck/?icid=main|htmlws-sb-n|dl5|sec3_lnk1|174486

In all seriousness, I was using my Magellan GPS (because of this I have upgraded!) to go to a location and it told us to bear right onto Route 1...thing is where they told us to turn right was directly it was a cornfield!!!