Man obeys his GPS' instruction to turn right, drives on train tracks, causes wreck.

[Jayems]

A 32-year-old Californian whose rental car got smashed by a Metro-North train last night was issued a minor summons for causing the fiery crash that stranded railroad commuters for hours.

Bo Bai, a computer technician from Sunnyvale who said he was merely trusting his car's global positioning system when he steered onto the tracks, was cited for obstructing a railroad crossing, officials said this afternoon.

http://www.lohud.com/apps/pbcs.dll/a...WS01/801030409


Seriously. How is this even possible. I have GPS, and I take everything with a grain of salt that it says. It some times tells you to turn when you obviously cant... so I can't possibly fathom how you can be so stupid... anyway...

[GoinAllTheWay]

Honestly, you knew something like this would happen sooner or later with those things. next question is, does the maker of the GPS device have any liability?

[Jayems]

I know a guy in Germany had a similar issue, and ended up suing. Anyone know how that ended up?

[corporatejay]

Pfft, this was done on the office months ago...oh wait..this is real life.

[Phanuthier]

Originally Posted by Jayems

http://www.lohud.com/apps/pbcs.dll/a...WS01/801030409


Seriously. How is this even possible. I have GPS, and I take everything with a grain of salt that it says. It some times tells you to turn when you obviously cant... so I can't possibly fathom how you can be so stupid... anyway...

I don't think that was the issue

You know that feeling when you wake up and your phone is ringing and someone rings your doorbell? Something analogous to this.

[Locke]

Well this is a lawsuit and a half.

[Dion]

This is sooooo typical of human behaviour. Instead of taking responsibility for ones own actions/stupidity they try to blame someone else.

[photon]

We were worried about this when doing our GPS enabled games for phones. Playing a game and watching the screen while walking around (the whole thing that drives the game is moving), even in testing we had guys walking into poles and stuff.

I figured that if one game ever got really popular, some guy would eventualy walk out in front of a bus and we'd get sued. We did have disclaimers on the games too I think.

It wouldn't be the GPS maker that would be responsible though, I would think it would be the mapping company (Tele Atlas or whoever).