A MAN who spent eight hours on the Guangzhou-Shenzhen Expressway trying to find Guangzhou on Dec. 21 finally had to call on police to help.
The man, identified by his surname Zou, lives in Shenzhen. He departed 2 p.m. on the day in his new car using a car satellite navigator. He was taking a pot of soup to Guangyuan Bus Station on behalf of a friend.
The car navigator had yet to be updated to remove road restrictions imposed during the Asian Games in Guangzhou. This resulted in novice driver Zou being misdirected around the expressway network for eight hours.
He found himself at the Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport with an empty fuel tank at 10 p.m.
He had been delayed in a traffic jam for half an hour near Dongguan and everything was going well when he arrived at Guangzhou Expressway at about 5 p.m.
I had been following the navigator, but it was giving wrong directions. I missed the right-hand turns over and over again, he said.
He was driving along National Highway 107 and should have turned at the Huanan Expressway exit, but the navigator told him to drive another 1 kilometer before turning but there was no exit, and Zou became hopelessly lost.
He was so exhausted after eight hours drive that he decided to call police at a gas station near the Guangzhou airport. It then took him just 10 minutes to arrive at the hard-to-get destination with a pot of cold soup.
It was a horrible experience, he said. Novice drivers should learn more about the roads.
(Tina Chen)
