A woman in Navi Mumbai drove her Audi into a ditch blindly after following instructions on Google Maps. The accident happened when she was driving from Belapur to Ulwe early Friday morning.
Going by reports, the woman was to follow the Bay Bridge in Belapur. But Google Maps guided her via a path under the bridge, heading towards Dhruvatara Jetty. Continuing on that way, her car simply dropped into a ditch.
Belapur Assistant Police Inspector Narayan Palampalle told ANI, “Around 1 am on Friday, police got the news that an Audi vehicle had dropped into a Belapur ditch.” He further added that local police and marine security guards soon arrived at the spot and found that the woman had accidentally taken the lower route rather than the right bridge.
“Subsequently, her car skidded into a ditch, leading to the accident. The woman was rescued safely with a boat owned by the marine security team,” added the police. The rescue mission took just a few minutes, and the woman, who was traveling alone in the car, was retrieved safely uninjured.
#WATCH | Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra: A car following the navigation of Google Maps fell into a ditch in Belapur. pic.twitter.com/JUmxobSIY1
— ANI (@ANI) July 26, 2025
This is not the first such incident. Over the past few years, there have been numerous incidents of accidents resulting from deceptive route instructions from the navigation app. Two French travelers were left marooned on an empty road in Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh, last January after taking a shortcut suggested by Google Maps while traveling to Kathmandu from Delhi.
In another tragic incident last year, three individuals lost their lives when their car went off an under-construction bridge. Google Maps did not warn them about the damaged bridge, and the car went crashing 50 feet down into a river.
