Southfield man's lawn 'turned into a road' by Uber sat-navs
In Southfield, Michigan, sat-nav apps keep treating one family's private horseshoe driveway as a through road – so drivers hit a dead end and simply carry on across the front lawn. Nearly every day.
Most people’s front gardens are for grass, a few flowerbeds and perhaps a gnome. James Campbell’s front garden in Southfield, Michigan, has apparently been promoted to a road – and nobody asked him.
Campbell’s home sits at a dead end off a dirt road, with a horseshoe driveway that can be reached from two different streets. Some navigation apps appear to think that makes it a handy through route. So, almost every day, drivers follow the little blue line down his private drive, find it blocked by parked cars, and then do the only logical thing: drive straight across his lawn.
AI illustration – rush hour, front-garden edition. Not the actual home.
He has a doorbell camera full of footage of it happening. And when he manages to ask drivers what on earth they are doing, the answer is always the same: “Well, my GPS said to go this way.” His reply is a classic: “Dude, if the GPS told you to drive into the Detroit River, are you still going to drive into the Detroit River? It’s obviously grass.”
Campbell says every driver he has spoken to was working for Uber. One rolled down her window on camera and said: “I’m an Uber driver and this is where Uber sent me. I apologize, sir.” He has put up signs at both ends of the drive and he and his wife have reported it through the apps repeatedly – and with two children under five at home, he says the safety worry is real.
AI illustration – exaggerated for comic effect; nobody has crashed. (Spot Gaz, our gorilla, hiding somewhere in this picture.)
Uber told WXYZ the situation was concerning and that it was looking into it, adding that drivers must obey the rules of the road and posted signs, and may use third-party navigation apps.
Until the maps are fixed, the Campbells’ lawn remains the most popular shortcut in town.
Reported by WXYZ 7 News Detroit (Brett Kast and Rob Oldani, November 2026), with further coverage from Michigan News Source (Katie Heid, 12 Nov 2026).
Images: main photo – “Southfield, Michigan” by Ken Lund, May 2014, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (representative; not the family’s home). Illustrations: Gorilla Gazette / AI-generated.
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