Strange

Followed GPS - Wrong House Demolished

by Ostia | June 14, 2009 at 05:33 am

1118 views | 7 Recommendations | 4 comments

In a lot of cases GPS has caused people to end up at the wrong address, or in some extreme cases even to drive off the road. Only a few days ago too much trust in GPS led to an even more extreme error: a company sent their workers to demolish a house not providing them with the address but only with GPS coordinates, and the workers ended up demolishing the wrong house.

Quote

“You can’t imagine. It’s just incredulous that something like this can happen and no one contact the owner,” said Byrd. Byrd grew up in the home with his nine brothers and sisters. It’s a three bedroom house on a little road bearing his family’s name. “We were taught that you could do anything that you wanted to do as long as you were willing to work hard and pay the price,” said Byrd. Byrd’s cousin shot video Monday of a bulldozer in the yard of the house with dumpsters loaded with rubble. The demolition company said it had paperwork. “I said, ‘Paperwork for what?’ and he said, ‘For the house, to demolish the house.’ I said, ‘I’m the owner of the house, I haven’t given anybody any authority to demolish this house,’” said Byrd.

So far there has been no official statement about the incident from the demolition company.

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Ostia

at 05:38 on June 14th, 2009

I received an error message the first time I uploaded the video, so I tried it again and now both videos are posted. They are the same so there is no need to watch both (how can I delete one of them?)

harringtola

at 09:11 on June 14th, 2009

I have GPS built into my car and on my phone. I have encountered many issues with GPS as I have with prior maps I used in traveling. I have not followed the commands however to drive into a field or pond when it should be a road. What has become of people checking prior to making such a devastating mistake. There should have been validation of authority in this type of action you would think. To leave a package you need a signature.

Roy C

at 10:54 on June 14th, 2009

Mark Twain said something like, "Be careful what you read in health books. A misprint could kill you."

Same advice on this.

So many horrible acts in the history of the world are essentially a version of this whole story. Years ago, police destroyed a number of houses because of the wrong address, and gang members killed entire families based on the wrong address.

But, there is a larger issue. The position co-ordinates seem to be "infallible" and we act on them, not using common sense nor subjecting the information to some kind of verification.

The Bible or Carl Marx or the latest economic theory or the latest medicine. All GPS and not infallible.