Blame Your Mistakes on Technology

Techdirt has an quick look at how it is becoming much more common for people to blame their mistakes on technology. "There are people driving off cliffs and through flooded roads and taking detours that span half of England, apparently at the behest of their navigation units. Things got so bad in one place that authorities even had to put up "ignore your sat nav" signs. Now, a woman's car got hit by a train, and for some reason, she's blaming a GPS navigation unit."

Comments

Obligatory

[mdboyd]

If your GPS unit told you to jump off a bridge, would you do it?

Re:Obligatory

[AsmCoder8088]

That depends. Is the voice of the GPS unit in question female?

personal responsibility

[froggero1]

it's much easier to blame someone/something else than take personal responsibility for your actions. Is this really a surprise to anyone?

Re:personal responsibility

[Blue Stone]

I think it's just the Milgram's Experiment effect in operation; an authority telling a person what to do, and that person submitting to that percieved authrority, even in defiance of their own eyes, ears and conscience, and doing what they're told.

In this case the percieved authority is a little electronic box.

Common Sense

[ATAMAH]

Technology is a supplement, it is not meant to replace common sense.

Natural Selection

[EonBlueApocalypse]

Must be technologies way of thinning the herd.

Common Tech Support Nightmares

[Null537]

I work for a company that makes software that is used for navigation, and there are a good amount of tech support calls complaining about how the "program sent us down an unmarked dirt road!" They don't seem to realize that they drove themselves down the dirt road, on the suggestion of a computer. I think we've all seen our GPS's be off by a bit, some people are missing the fact that nothing is perfect, especially not a box with a tiny screen.

Suggested warning label for gadgets

[theReal-Hp_Sauce]

"Attention: This machine has no brain, use your own!"

-hps

Re:Suggested warning label for gadgets

[noidentity]

It'd need a supplemental warning label too:

"Warning: You might not have one either"

The car was not moving during the coffee incident

[Captain Nitpick]

When you now go ahead and put that so effing HOT cup right between your legs and hit the throttle, you act just plain and simply stupidly.

She was a passenger in the car that her grandson was driving. He had stopped the vehicle specifically so she could remove the lid for adding cream and sugar.

Let me repeat myself. Stella Liebeck was sitting in a motionless car when she spilled coffee that was so hot that she required skin grafts.

Stop making assertions about how stupid people are based on made-up "facts".