Why did the woman cross the road?

After reading Paul Foy's June 1 Associated Press article, "Woman sues Google over Utah walking directions," Pamville News has learned that a woman is suing Google Maps over what she claims were unsafe directions that resulted in her bodily injury.

Lauren Rosenberg of Los Angeles, Calif., was visiting Park City, Utah, in January, when she used her Blackberry to access Google Maps for directions to walk from one end of the town to the other. The Google Maps directions led her to a four-lane boulevard that did not have a sidewalk.

While Rosenberg attempted to cross the boulevard, at night, in search of a walking path on the far side, she was struck by a speeding vehicle, resulting in several broken bones — and the driver being named in the lawsuit as well.

The suit claims that the path recommended by Google Maps was "not reasonably safe for pedestrians," and Rosenberg is seeking over $100,000 in damages from the corporation she claims led her astray and the driver who stopped her in her tracks.

Rosenberg was not contacted for comment, and Google officials are keeping mum on the topic, however, intrepid Pamville News reporters did speak with a few people connected with the alleged victim.

"You do your best, y'know, and then heartbreak," said Cecil Winford, Rosenberg's grade school crossing guard. "I try to drum it into their heads when they're young. 'You get to a street,' I tell them, 'Always look left-right-left before you step foot in the road.' Some of these kids never get it," he said.

"When you hear of something like this happening to one of 'your own' kids," Winford added, "sure you laugh on the outside, but inside you're crying out, 'Left-right-left!

How hard is it!'

Y'know?"

Mildred Peckinpaw, Rosenberg's junior high geography teacher, recalled easier times and a lesson that acts, now, as an eerie premonition of Rosenberg's future.

"One winter during midday break, we found Lauren and her little gang of friends huddled around the tether ball pole — tongues stuck to the icy metal and all of them screaming for help," Peckinpaw said, explaining: "Well, it sounded more like 'Hep mnee! Hep mnee!'

"After we got their little tongues unstuck, my first question for Lauren was 'why?'

And she just said that they did it because one of the girls told them to," Peckinpaw shrugged. "Of course, I asked her if her friends jumped off a cliff, would she follow, and — my hand to God — I thought Lauren was kidding when she said yes."

Peckinpaw said, "I guess some kids never learn."

Other people weren't as sympathetic as Winford and Peckinpaw.

"What Mildred means is some women never learn," said Joe Plumber, the high school janitor. "This is exactly why guys don't ask directions.

"I mean, first of all, guys don't need to ask directions because we have a built in compass right up here," Plumber said tapping his head with a finger. "And second, guys have, like, a genetic memory of the dire ramifications of what happens when you start relying on someone else's directions and maps and things. Women don't have that. It comes with the Y-chromosome, so guys know things."

Men everywhere are being harangued unjustly by direction- dependent women, Plumber said.

"Probably there's a guy walking across the desert with a camel yawing in one ear about wanting to stop to go potty," he said, "and, like, three wives yapping in the other ear about stopping at the next nomad's tent to get directions.

And I say: Don't do it, man.

Stay true to your gut, your cellular- level instincts, because if you ask directions to the next watering hole then a bus is going to come out of nowhere in the middle of the sand dunes and run you over.

"If that Rosenberg-chick had been a guy walking out onto a dark road reading a map rather than following common sense," he said, "she'd be dead right now. She should feel lucky she didn't die from her genetic ignorance and stop suing people.

I'm just saying."

And we're just saying, thank you for reading Pamville News where our motto is "Big fat lies still plump when you cook 'em."

(Google Maps does not recommend any routes to http:// viewnorth40.wordpress.com.)