A Canadian woman made a splash last week after she drove into a lake while following GPS instructions.
The 23-year-old, who has not been named, was driving through Tobermory, Ontario at night when she approached a boat launch, Canada’s City News reports. The driver alleges that the GPS guided her down a wrong turning, leading her straight into Lake Huron.
According to Constable Katrina Rubinstein-Gilbert, the driving conditions at the time were difficult, adding: “How the launch works, it’s not an airborne thing. It’s not ‘Dukes of Hazzard’. It kind of goes off the road and the launch just drops all of a sudden. So she would have been driving on the road, and then all of a sudden just dropped and hit water.”
Shores of Lake Huron, near Tobermory, where the incident took place (Credit: jsmooth7/Reddit)
Police say that the car – a red Toyota Yaris – stayed afloat long enough for the woman to escape through the window and swim back to shore. She then walked to the nearest hotel and called police, who recovered the car on Friday morning.
The woman emerged from the drive-and-dunk uninjured, and even managed to save her purse while escaping the sinking vehicle. Rubenstein-Gilbert said that she was “in really good spirits” and that alcohol was “absolutely not” involved.
It’s not clear what particular model of Sat Nav the woman involved in the incident was using, but we’d recommend steering clear of it – and lakes too, for that matter – when driving around Tobermory, Ontario.
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Have you ever been led astray by a Sat Nav or smartphone mapping software? Let us know in the comments.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.