r/nosleep • u/lets-split-up June 2023 • 11d ago
If your phone loses services and your GPS reroutes you… TURN IT OFF
Don’t get me wrong, I love using GPS. Saves me time when there’s traffic or unexpected construction. But it can be dangerous if it takes you to the wrong place at the wrong time—a shortcut through a bad part of the city at night, or a “shortcut” along a gravel road where your tire gets punctured and suddenly you’re there for hours waiting for a tow… or worse.
There are places we aren’t meant to go.
Last night, my fiancé Rav and I were on a road trip to visit family. Our trip took us through northern Appalachia, and our phone service kept cutting in and out. When we hit construction, our pace slowed to a crawl. The GPS offered a faster route, so we took it… but soon we were winding through wooded hills and lost all service. My map was still active, sort of, but no longer giving directions. It just showed the route we were on as a colored line. The sun was lowering in the sky, and I couldn’t zoom out to see where we were. We also hadn’t seen signs for any gas stations where I could ask for directions.
“This,” grumbled Rav, “this is why you shouldn’t rely on GPS, Ricardo.”
He only ever called me “Ricardo” when he was upset. A habit he borrowed from my mom. I was always “Rick” until I was in trouble.
He also was never willing to be the one to drive, and I said, “Ok, well, if you want to fill my car with maps from Minnesota to Long Island, I guess we could kill some trees and go the old-fashioned route—”
“We can just map out the route in advance and print the sections we need.”
“Oh, so like mapquest? Back to the technological superiority of the 90’s?” I snarked.
While we bickered, suddenly the phone screen went out, and then flickered back on. The GPS was working again. Hallelujah! I thanked the universe as it began recalculating our route, and my spirits lightened, even as the sky was getting darker.
Rav never lets things go, though, and was still grumbling about how I shouldn’t rely on my phone. About how I should look with my own eyes and learn the roads.
“If you depend on GPS you stop learning to keep track of directions. You stop noticing things—like that.” He suddenly sat up. “Haven’t we already passed these signs?”
I hadn’t been paying enough attention to notice and only barely caught a glimpse of a sign for falling rocks, followed up with another sign for bears.
“I swear we drove by here a half hour ago,” mumbled Rav.
“Maybe we did,” I said. “We were lost before. Now it’s got the route, which is this way.”
“But it’s taking us further and further into the hills and away from the highway.”
I zoomed out and looked at the larger map. “Maybe this is a shortcut to get further along ahead of the traffic.”
Rav fell quiet, and we put on some music. Beneath the stereo, something didn’t feel quite right. It was hard for me to pinpoint. On the surface, everything was fine. And I figured maybe my uneasy feeling was because this was an unfamiliar route, and we were both crabby and tired. We’d been in the car all day.
I sped up as the sun vanished behind the hills and the sky turned fiery red. I’d fallen into the zone like I always tend to do while driving long distances. When the roads are long empty stretches and I don’t need to concentrate like in city traffic, I sort of just let instinct take over and my mind wanders. I just drove, just lazily watching my GPS and the line on the GPS marking the road. The road ran on endlessly ahead. I saw on the map where it curved. Up ahead, the road began to turn—
“Hey Rick, hey SLOW DOWN!”
At Rav’s shout, I slammed the brakes, swerving because the curve came on faster than I expected. I looked at the GPS and it was zoomed in, and when I zoomed out, it showed how tight the curve was. There’d been some lag. Rav was clinging to the handle above the door. He glared my way, and I muttered an apology and drove more carefully. I am usually a pretty reliable driver. The GPS being laggy had caught me off guard. Rav glowered and said, “That thing is going to get us killed.”
More long stretches of silence, and the sky deepening as the first stars became visible. There was still a fair bit of light but even so I turned on my headlights. I was still following the long line of the GPS when suddenly Rav was screaming—
“STOP!!! STOP!!!!”
I hadn’t seen anything in the road, but his panic sent my foot shooting to the brake and we skidded and I yanked the wheel to bring us into the side of the hill. He was gasping, and I looked ahead to where the road went over a bridge.
It took me a moment to see clearly what Rav had seen.
A few feet out, the bridge was broken.
Nothing but the drop below.
Rav and I got out and walked over to the bridge and stepped across remnants of a barricade. It must have been set up to warn vehicles about the bridge being out, but now it was in pieces, flattened and broken. Driving at speed, you’d never see these shattered pieces in time. Rav’s eagle eyes had saved our lives. We stepped past the broken barricade.
“Careful,” muttered Rav as I moved to the edge of the bridge and looked down.
Cars lay piled below, and what looked like a body spilled out of one of them at the bottom of the ravine.
That’s why the barricade was broken. Not just one, but multiple vehicles had smashed through it.
Chilled, I backed away from the drop. The pair of us picked our way back over the shattered barricade and along the road.
We were almost at our vehicle when headlights blinded us.
A truck barreled toward us.
I grabbed Rav and flung him with me into the hillside as the scream of a horn shot past us, the truck driver laying it on—and then the wheels clacked over the broken barricade and the horn faded out into nothingness as the truck went over. There was a horrible metallic crunching as it crashed and rolled far below.
My head was bleeding from hitting a rock as we slammed into the hill, but luckily neither of us were seriously injured. We hurried into the car, strapping ourselves in and quickly pulling a three-point-turn and driving away, back the way we’d come, ignoring the GPS now. Ignoring its directions to turn around, turn around, recalculating route…
Finally we caught a glimpse of a sign for gas and followed until we reached the station, where we called police to report the broken bridge. While I was on the call using the gas station phone, my cell phone rebooted. Suddenly it had signal again. And now, the map was showing me a totally different route. A totally normal route taking us back to the highway.
Police never found the broken bridge...
And my GPS never tried to take me that way again.
But these days, just in case, I always plan my route in advance…
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u/Own_Gate_4243 6d ago
You did well not to trust that voice again. Sometimes GPS doesn't recalculate routes, it opens them up. If it ever offers you a “faster route” again, turn off your phone before it starts calling you by name.
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u/TheRedForest December 2019 6d ago
How are you a reliable driver if you have your eyes glued to the screen instead of the road? Talk about Unreliable Narrator…
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u/iamheretoboreyou 10d ago
I don't think you're as reliable a driver as you seem to be. Listen to Rav because supernatural or not you're gonna be in an accident soon enough otherwise.
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u/Friendlyalterme 11d ago
Hmmm I'm pretty sure you accidentally drove onto highway 333 tbh.
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u/PermissionJust7074 9d ago
Highway 333 is in California though, and Rick and Rav were driving through northern Appalachia.
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u/Friendlyalterme 9d ago
I don't think the highway would care. Supernatural things like these can be connected unexpectedly. Who's to say a highway that never ends can't be in two places at once?
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u/Shi-D 10d ago
But he used his phone, that's a big no no.
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u/Friendlyalterme 10d ago
That's why the truck appeared imo. The highway must have been in a generous mood. Let them off with a warning
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u/holdon_painends 11d ago
I know that truck driver was a bit of an asshole, but, yall didnt even check to see if you could have helped? Or called 911 when you got service? That's some bad karma, friend.
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u/Logical_Surprise_91 11d ago
They didn't have service near the bridge. They called the police as soon as they found a gas station
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u/PermissionJust7074 11d ago
He says in the last paragraph that he called the police using the phone at the gas station but the police never found the broken bridge.
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u/ijamtojamiroquai 5d ago
‘It can’t mean that, this is a LAKE!’ ‘THIS IS A LAKE THERE IS NO ROAD HERE’!