Driver Blames Waze After Car Ends Up on PNR Tracks

(SPOT.ph) You've heard it before: we've become too dependent on technology—especially where navigation apps are concerned. Whatever direction-giving platform you use, we’ve all had our personal grievances: a misdirection, a GPS delay, an erroneous pin. Now it has supposedly led a vehicle to almost fall into a creek.

A white sedan Ford got stuck between two Philippine National Railway tracks of the Beata Crossing near Pandacan Station on Sunday, March 5, with the driver saying that they had simply followed navigation app Waze’s instruction to make a turn. The police received the report at around 4:20 a.m.

Driver ends up with car on PNR tracks after following Waze

The driver, a foreign national, was on his way home to Makati City from Adriatico Street in Manila as per The Philippine Star. He said he failed to notice that they were headed to railroad tracks and see the hole in the ground because the road was too dark.

Initial investigations also found that that the driver had been drinking, ABS-CBN reported.

“They believed that the app made a mistake of directing them to the PNR tracks,” Pandacan Police Station 10 Commander Captain Michael Locsin was quoted as saying in Filipino.

According to Manila Bulletin, the driver and passenger are both safe following the incident. The Philippine National Police and the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority Rescue Emergency Group have since lifted the vehicle from the PNR tracks, as seen on this reel.

"Safety is always a top priority for Waze and we encourage drivers to use the app as it is intended. Waze routes its users using only the public roads infrastructure, based on local driving laws and the legal road signs in the area," the navigation app said in reponse on March 8 after Summit Media reached out regarding the incident.

Many have commented that the driver blaming the app was just an attempt to save face—raise your hands if you think an excuse like that just made the entire situation worse than it already was.

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UPDATED (March 9): The article has been updated to include a response from Waze.