GPS Leads Tourists Into Australian Bay

Three Japanese tourists are leaving Australia without the vacation they wanted and $1500 poorer than they expected, and sticking a rental car company with the arduous task of retrieving a vehicle from a muddy Australian bay. The culprit? A GPS system that apparently didn't have very accurate maps. It's a very valuable lesson in the over-reliance on technology.

The three tourists, each in their early twenties, wanted to take a day trip to North Stradbroke island in the land down under. So they hopped in their rented Hyundai Getz, along with their rented GPS unit. The only problem is that to get to the island from where they were, there was a good 9.3 miles of water. The GPS didn't seem to mind that. It told them to just drive through.

"It told us we could drive down there. It kept saying it would navigate us to a road," said one of the tourists in a local Australian publication. But then, "We got stuck." They only made it about 0.3 miles before their car was completely stuck in the water. The muddy ground at the bottom of the water made it impossible to put the vehicle in reverse or make any attempt to rescue it. They simply abandoned the car, and suffered the embarrassment of onlookers. So, the moral of the story – if your GPS says to drive ahead, and all you see is water, don't trust it.

[via Bayside Bulletin]