Reminds me of another story from some years ago. That one had a sad ending. Somewhat curious, too. Apparently the driver was in more or less good health, but sometimes “became confused.” There was no indication the passenger’s mental faculties, but she did have some physical impairment. I took the “confused” as code-speak for early dementia.
When I was in high school in Dallas, our music teacher set out to visit her parents in Ft. Worth. She realized she had taken the wrong highway when she saw the signs saying “Welcome To Oklahoma.” 
(In fairness, with traffic, a trip from Dallas (which is pretty close to the TX/OK border) to Ft. Worth can take almost as long as to the state border. Makes for a funny story, though.)
Hah. On a trip from SEMich to Chicago to visit and pick up my brother and his girlfriend, I (who had driven to Chicago earlier that day and was tired) handed my keys to the girlfriend - a PhD student - and fell asleep while she drove. I figured it woud be pretty self-explanatory to figure out where we were going - multiple great big flood-lit signs on the interstate! - but, no.
Couple hours later I got prodded awake. She got confused and circled us back to Illinois and only figured that out when she saw the “Welcome to Illinois!” (great big flood-lit signs on the interstate!) signs. Only then did she figure that something was just a teensy bit wrong.
And this was a 20-something PhD student at the University of Chicago. Counting the back-tracking, we’re talking easily a four-hour detour.
About 10 years ago, I had to go from the eastern 'burbs of Cleveland to the western 'burbs. But instead of just going west, I went east, then south. When I got to the intersection of two interstates, several miles southeast of where I started, I suddenly said “hey, this is not where I should be.” I was only in my 50s, not demented, not tired, not dehydrated, and not hypoglycemic. I just wasn’t paying attention.
The man was NOT going to stop and ask for directions. And he WASN’T going to listen to the wife. Enough said. The wife is just lucky she went before they left and or her bladder held out (because he wasn’t going to stop for that either you know).
Why are you automatically choosing a blame-the-spouse scenario?
Funny this should come up today.
I sent one of my employees out to pick up a car from a customer. He drove west on the interstate to where he was going.
After picking up the car he got back on the interstate going west. 30 miles later that interstate joined another one where he could turn and head back to the office.
The part I don’t get is going to the house he was traveling uphill in a densely populated area. When he got back on the wrong way he was in the mountains with no houses around. He didn’t notice the difference.
This is a guy in his 30s
Men get blamed for everything these days. We’re idiots and dolts and indecisive numbskulls. That’s what all the commercials on TV tell me anyway.
Not the first time it’s happened
http://m.heraldsun.com.au/travel/news/elderly-victorian-couples-20-hour-airport-drive/story-fn32891l-1226370924346
They left California and ended up in Oregon. Sounds like the plan was to drive to Canada, then spiral southward.
That one has some striking differences. First off, they were going on a somewhat lengthy journey, and it was unclear where they were headed, with multiple possible routes for their options. Second, they preferred scenic routes over interstates. Somehow they went over an embankment, so they weren’t driving around lost, they had an accident but weren’t locatable because nobody knew where to look.
Amusing, but understandable. You can take highways in either case, and the length of the trip is similar. Now if she hadn’t noticed until they hit Kansas, that would have been something.
As a joke, it was rather obvious. I thought of it myself.
Each of those is curious.
The first, they traveled 500 km, but where 8 km from home when found, so apparently they did turn around at some point.
The second the man is not believed to have been driving around that whole time. He stopped somewhere for most of the time.
The third, the guy wasn’t driving in a straight line, but searching an area. He did even stop and ask for directions, but apparently couldn’t make himself understood. And to be fair, this occurred during a snowstorm. So he’s got some mitigating factors there.
But yes, all have similar circumstances of an elderly person becoming easily confused.
That’s a joke son.
Does he get paid by the hour or by the pickup?
Neither. Commission on sales (he is a service advisor).
I can’t match 10min->2hours, but did once fall asleep in the car after directing my boyfriend to take the east exit of 1-80 near Joliet so we could hop back home to Orland Park. Should have taken us about 20 minutes to the driveway. 2 hours later, I woke up as he poked me and asked where Davenport is. “Um…about here, apparently. You went west, didn’t ya?”
We were 17-18 at the time. Can’t blame that one on being an old fart. Sometimes people are just taken down by an odd mixture of overconfidence and uncertainty.
Mr Sterling?
After my senior prom I was supposed to meet some friends at the 24 hr bowling alley. I took one wrong turn and spent the next 8 hrs driving around the tri-state area on backroads. :o No GPS, and it was kind of hard to stop for directions when nothing is open. Also my date needed to pee, but apparently not bad enough to go sqaut in the woods in a prom dress. And we kept passing motels, one of which advertised themed rooms. It was like the someone was testing me to make sure I was really gay. And I had to pay to get out of New Jersey. :smack: Twice.
Right. A lot of us don’t want to admit it but we often negotiate the roads on a sort of autopilot, relying on pattern repetition as opposed to actually conscientiously tracking where we are, which way we’re aimed, and what do the signs say, so if we get distracted past one or two of those cues or reverse a pair we end up taking a whole bunch of further steps w/o realizing we flubbed a key turn three steps back.
One thing with the great big floodlit signs on the Interstate is that due to signaling standardization, to some people all the great big floodlit signs on the Interstate tend to look alike after a while; plus what happens if you know your destination is East of where you’re going but DOT has decided that the exit to the proper road is to be labeled as North/South; or you get one of those interchanges where there are several different ways to “go right”; or you know you’re going East on 70 to Columbus but there are a few exits/interchanges in a row with one or two but not all three of those referents. Again slight distraction or confusion and you can get thrown way off course.
One of the advantages of living in a moderately sized island is that however lost one gets, if you make sure to stay on primary roads it’s kind of self-limiting how far off-track you can get.
I’ve missed my share of turns, navigated by the wrong landmarks, even wandered around backwooks Oklahoma when I thought I was taking a shortcut and ended up in nowhere’sville. But at some point I recognized I was on the wrong track, and I did something about it. Whether it was as simple as stopping and looking at a map, or as complicated as turning around and going back the way I came until I recognized where I was supposed to be, I managed to not turn a 10 minute trip accross town into a 12 hour ordeal for 400 miles.
Most recent incident of note: back in 2008 I was evacuating Houston for Hurricane Ike, along with the half of Houston. Got stuck on I-45 heading to Dallas area. My nominal 5 to 6 hour trip took 35 hours, with 24 just getting through Houston. Mostly sitting on the interstate, then crawling forward a couple feet, then sitting again.
So after around 45 hours with about 2 hours sleep I finally made it to Dallas and needed to navigate the highways to go north. I’ve driven numerous times and know the way, so I mostly drive on landmarks over map. Well, being so tired I was not fully coherent, and missed one of my turns. I didn’t get too far before I started to ping, but coming up with a plan to get where I needed to go was not working. It’s ~ 5 am and I’m not able to string a plan into an action. “I’ll turn around here. No wait, let’s just go north on this road. It will intersect another ahead. Why did I do north, I should have turned around? Okay, I’ll take this highway back west. Why did I just turn around? I was going to go west. Circle again, can’t make up my mind. Crap!”
I ended up spending 10 minutes driving in circles on feeder roads before circling back the long way.
But I knew I had a problem, I knew where I needed to go, and I was at least trying to fix the problem.
It was all the heroin.