Blindly following the driving instructions from Google Maps isn’t always such a good idea. While the tech has improved tremendously over the last two decades, it can still occasionally lead us down a long abandoned road or even drive off an unfinished or collapsed bridge.
Even by those standards, the latest bizarre incident is pretty hard to believe. A woman in Seattle took a wrong turn onto the tracks of a light rail line in the city after reportedly following her GPS instructions. She then drove for a quarter mile, managing to pull up to the elevated tracks of Mount Baker Station in a small neighborhood southeast of downtown Seattle.
Footage shows the red Mazda SUV struggling to move along the two rail tracks. Then, on Wednesday, an unintentionally hilarious photo made the rounds showing the 70-year-old driver standing next to her stranded vehicle with her arms on her hips, as if trying to figure out who had caused all of this mayhem.
As local radio station KIRO reports, the bizarre incident forced local transit authorities to shut down the city’s 1 Line light rail service for two hours Tuesday evening.
Emergency crews first cut off power to the tracks before removing the offending vehicle.
It likely wasn’t a straightforward operation. A swing loader, which is a special backhoe-like piece of equipment that can move along the tracks, had to be moved into place and lift the SUV using special straps, as footage recorded by local NBC affiliate KING–TV shows.
Fortunately, nobody was hurt — beyond, perhaps, a majorly bruised ego. The woman, however, was taken to the hospital — where she hopefully had her vision checked out.
According to police, she was not intoxicated and won’t be charged with a crime.
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