I have been using a GPS navigator for the past few years. Throughout the years, I have experienced a number of times when the GPS gave the incorrect direction such as to turn when there is no junction, or to use a much longer way when there is a shorter way (at first I thought I have wrongly chose the longer/shorter distance, but it turned out that my settings are correct!). But despite the wrong suggestions given by my Garmin Nuvi, I still manage to reach my destination. How? Use your justification and common sense.

But that’s not the case for Lauren Rosenberg who suffered some cuts and brain damage after following the suggested direction given by Google Maps to walk down a rural highway which has no pedestrian sidewalk and was hit by a car on January this year. As a result, she’s suing Google for her medical expenses and some other damages as well as the driver who hit her.

Earlier, she had sued her mobile service provider, Verizon for the ‘bugs’ in its GPS service, where Rosenberg is a Blackberry service subscriber and was using it when getting the direction from Google Maps to get from Daly Street to Prospector Avenue in Park City, Utah.

A later investigation shows that Google actually has given a warning to its users when obtaining walking directions. The message saying that the walking directions are in beta, so users are reminded to use with caution. But this message can only be viewed from computers and not smartphones such as Blackberry.

But to me, we still need to have our own judgement when using any kind of digital tools such as GPS. We can’t 100% rely on them as they are designed and built by human, so it is prone to human errors. Understanding how a specific technology works is important to ensure that we are safe from any threat that may posed to us by accident.