Blame Your Mistakes on Technology

Techdirt has an quick look at how it is becoming much more common for people to blame their mistakes on technology. "There are people driving off cliffs and through flooded roads and taking detours that span half of England, apparently at the behest of their navigation units. Things got so bad in one place that authorities even had to put up "ignore your sat nav" signs. Now, a woman's car got hit by a train, and for some reason, she's blaming a GPS navigation unit."

Obligatory

[mdboyd]

If your GPS unit told you to jump off a bridge, would you do it?

Go right ahead and blame the technology!

[Goalie_Ca]

Now, a woman's car got hit by a train, and for some reason, she's blaming a GPS navigation unit.

I agree cuz these things should really include a breathalyser as well.

Re:Obligatory

[firpecmox]

That happened to my friend, and he did. How do you feel now?

Re:Obligatory

[AsmCoder8088]

That depends. Is the voice of the GPS unit in question female?

Re:Blame

[Goalie_Ca]

At least if you copy and paste flame material be sure to select "Plain Text" from the scroll down box. That way you get nice paragraphs :D

Natural Selection

[EonBlueApocalypse]

Must be technologies way of thinning the herd.

Obligatory Nick Burns...

[Aerinoch]

Yeah... It's the e-mail that's stupid, not you, huh?

Re:Obligatory

[porkThreeWays]

Maybe... [google.com]

Suggested warning label for gadgets

[theReal-Hp_Sauce]

"Attention: This machine has no brain, use your own!"

-hps

Re:personal responsibility

[Mr. Flibble]

I blame slashdot for my inabilty to reply to provide a witty retort to your comment.

It's all part of Skynet!

[dasunst3r]

This GPS technology must be one part of Skynet [slashdot.org]! First the robots are going to exterminate the stupid people, then they're going to make the smart ones sit at the terminal all day long and program them! MUWAHAHAHAHAH!!!

Re:Blame

[kevingolding2001]

I believe these kinds of morons are called 'judges'.

my computer made me surf for porn

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know how to work this damn thing!

Re:Blame

[Opportunist]

So do mine, but additionally, I have the problem that after every dot I almost automatically type "com".com

Well there's your problem...

[sporkme]

Repairman: [pointing to a Good/Evil switch on the back of the doll] Yup, here's your problem. Someone set this thing to ``Evil''.
/simpsons

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

These directions are for planning purposes only. You may find that construction projects, traffic, or other events may cause road conditions to differ from the map results.

Re:Suggested warning label for gadgets

[noidentity]

It'd need a supplemental warning label too:

"Warning: You might not have one either"

Re:they are just idiots...

[Anonymous Coward]

In many cases, that's exactly what's happening!

Re:they are just idiots...

[Architect_sasyr]

So this GPS wasn't a bug it was a feature.

function tooStupidToDrive() { initKillSequence(); }

;)

This is funny

[sasserstyl]

Looking at the original story [bbc.co.uk] two questions arise:

1. Why was she using her satnav to find her boyfriend's house? I presume she's been there before, because it was *his* satnav.

2. Why have the British Transport Police accepted the story that it was the satnav's fault? She drove onto a railway line in the path of an oncoming train causing thousands of pounds worth of damage and putting at risk people's lives. How is a mapping system responsible in any way for this?

Actually, I think I know what happened here. She didn't engage her brain. Mind you if she hasn't got the wit to apply fake tan to her hands as well as her face to avoid looking stupid [bbc.co.uk] it's probably to be expected.

Re:Obligatory

[guywcole]

A growing problem is that the vast majority of young people today (people my age, below 25) don't know how to read maps. They can usually follow a GPS or a GoogleMap, but hand them a mapbook and they're SOL.

This reminds me of my "senior week" when myself and some other high-school graduates went camping to celebrate our graduation. One night, they all got up the idea that they'd get tattoo's. But all they knew was the name of the town where the shop was. I was the only map-reader and I said I wouldn't take them there, but I'd give them one of my paper maps. They couldn't read the map, so they couldn't go.

But for their ignorance, there'd be a group of 20-21 year old kids trying to hide their "BFF" tattoos.