If your GPS device told you to drive off a cliff, would you do it?

I work in this industry.

The article mentioned trucks being sent into residential areas (or through tunnels/bridges that weren't meant for them). Google maps doesn't know what type of vehicle you're driving, but if you bought a vehicle with a navigation device factory-installed, then (at least for newer models), it does know, and any decent (and recent!) in-vehicle device won't send, for example, a commercial truck through a road not classed for it.

You also (again, with any sane, recent device) won't be routed through unpaved or construction roads. The device might not even be loaded with those non-routes.

Another consideration is, whether the maps were installed in the factory, or whether the device goes online to pull more recent maps (the obvious trade-offs apply), real road conditions, lane closures, detours, etc., happen faster and more ephemerally than any data provider can or will update their source data.

When driving, always use your eyes and your brain. No device, however useful as an aide to navigation, can substitute for them.

My brother-in-law calls his Garmin "the girlfriend" Sometimes she is right and sometimes he has to ignore her sexy British accented commands. "Recalculating coordinates"

One of my friends always follows his GPS navigation system, even if he knows it's wrong.

In particular, there's this one point on a freeway where the freeway signs clearly indicate the correct route, but his GPS always tells him something else. Without fail, he follows the GPS directions, which tell him to exit the freeway and almost immediately get back on the freeway.

It drives me nuts.

I had a GPS tell me to drive through a field in rural Germany once. Evidently, the two ruts going through the field were, technically a road and did get me where I was going.

I've also had various GPS units tell me to drive off the side of bridges, in to concrete walls and on train tracks.

That depends, is my wife nagging at me at the time?

haha the office (us), when they drive into the lake...

uh, no. i would not do it.