GPS Glitch!!

Dementia. People in the States do this all.the.time. Without the 'help' from a GPS, too. Once you get out of your little 'safe driving zone', nothing looks familiar, so you just keep driving...with no concept of how much time has passed. Or...perhaps she really didn't want to see this 'friend'.

Did this come from "The Onion, America's Finest News Source"?

No, we had it all across the German news yesterday as well. One can only be speechless...

So you all believe this story? We have to assume that though the Belgian woman had a GPS she had no cell phone with her so no one could contact her and ask "Where the hell are you anyway?" Sorry, no one is so stupid as to drive 60 hours for a 2 hour (guessing) trip and if this Belgian lady was this addled then it is necessary to take away her driver's licence.

Even though I'm a great believer in the truth is stranger than fiction; in this case I don't believe it.

I don't buy it either. If she really didn't notice languages changing on highway signs or where she stopped for fuel, or no signs to her destination, or hours and hours going by, she really does not need to be driving.

Yeah, uh huh. And she didn't notice the road tolls in France, or the Austrian vignette police nor those in Slovenia? Stopped to sleep? uh huh. I see nothing about Zagrab that would be similar to Bruxelles when entering the destination or POI on a sat nav. People do have dementia - including some in my own family - but that is not a cause for laughter nor sympathy. It is either that or made up or staged.

The article appears to be true. I was also a bit skeptical, but since it's not April 1st, I checked a number of websites to verify including: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/15/sabine-moreau-gps-belgium-croatia-900-miles_n_2475220.html As previous replies have mentioned, it's almost beyond belief that she didn't notice road signs in different languages, or at least have an approximate idea on how long a 90 km drive would take. Having to refuel several times and take a nap should have been a BIG clue! It's hard to understand why people implicitly trust Sat Nav so much. I often refer to my Garmin GPS as a "stupid machine" (especially when it provides incorrect directions), although it is useful to a degree. I'm always double-checking it against road signs and landmarks. A perfect example is a trip I made yesterday from one part of Portland to another. The "stupid machine" was directing me to get on I-84, which at that time in the afternoon rush hour was plugged solid with traffic (I could see it as I got close). I ignored the directions and followed my own sense of direction until the GPS resumed "thinking" and said "recalculating". I was surprised that it provided those directions on that one occasion, as I've travelled that same route a couple of times over the past few days, and it provided a more straightforward and logical route in the past. I suppose this will be added to the annals of GPS stories along with those of other people who made similar errors, such as driving their car into the water as the GPS "told" them to. Cheers!

I am not surprised... A few years ago some tourists in the UK drove into a body of water.... There was a big sign that said "bridge out" but thier GPS said "go this way' so they did...Some folks just suspend thier brains very easily.

Shouldn't it be easy to verify through the positioning of the gps or her cell phone? Years ago in Cincinnati a group of teens called home from Florida with a story about being abducted at gunpoint. Turns out they just drove to the beach for fun, then ran out of money.

In Australia when you turn 70 you have to have a Medical Certificate from your doctor in order to renew your driving licence. This has to be done every year. Eye sight, hearing tested etc. Full medical history, current and past, required. It would be very difficult, I imagine, to test for awareness of where you are and perception of time and distance travelled. I am still staggered by this story. It would equate to me starting out in Adelaide and finishing up in Sydney!!!
What is the situation in the US and Europe re over 70 drivers?

I doubted this story because it wasn't reported on most of the Belgian news sites I regularly follow (De Standaard, Het Belang van Limburg, Het Laaste Nieuws, etc.), but I see the link that Ken provided links it to Nieuwsblad.be, so I guess this story actually is legit! For an insight on the state of relations between Belgium's two linguistic communities, many of the comments on the Dutch-language Nieuwsblad site are basically "What do you expect for a Walloon?".

Judy-It varies, but for most states, if an elderly person can shuffle up to the counter and doesn't bump into too many things on the way, they're good for another driver's license. If we restricted the poor dears, well, we'd have to provide more public support and services, and better public transportation. And more parents would have to move in with their grown children. So much better to send them off in a car and hope for the best. True story-I went to help an old woman who was stuck on a hill. She thought her car was going backwards when she took her foot off the brake. In fact, it was going forwards. She thanked me, drove off, and promptly went up on a big curb, and then almost hit me. I followed her, got her plate number, and called the police. I was told there was nothing they could do since they didn't witness it. She probably went on to Zagreb.

I read the article on Mail Online. IF...and I say if it is true the lady could be suffering from senility or the beginning of Alzheimers. LOL Was interesting to read about her trip.

Great story Karen!

Sometimes the Mail runs stories that are equivalent to what you'd see in the National Enquirer - so I'm thinking the story isn't true or at least grossly exagerated. I think Brits tend to take Mail stories with a large grain of salt, even though they run real news in the same paper/website.

Judy:
Maybe she was a 67 year old (in dog years) Belgian Malinois and was so concentrating on her driving that she didn't notice anything but the road ahead. I enjoyed the story and the thread; now when ever I do something I think is really dumb, I'll remember this story and give myself a break thinking "at least I'm smart enough to not travel through five countries on the way to the train station"--at least until I realized I had just turned off the ignition in Nicaragua.

Ken, we train the GPS's in Portland to do that. It minimizes the tourists on the road. Once they get trapped in just one of our traffic jams they vow to never drive during our rush hours again. Unfortunately some of you Canucks are tooo smart, and don't fall for this. Steve

@Steve, Other cities must also "train" their GPS units in the same way, which is why I'm constantly double-checking the "stupid machine" against road signs or landmarks whenever I'm using it. I don't trust it completely (and with good reason, as I've found).

I have had more than one friend who discovered the depths of a parent's dementia through some weird driving experience. My mother drove one entire afternoon trying to get home from her sister's house 25 miles away. No one ever knew how she found her way home. That was when I realized how bad off she was. She didn't realize what she had done. It was frightening because in conversation she seemed pretty normal.