GPS Apps Keep Sending Drivers Across James Campbell’s Southfield Front Lawn, and He Has Two Kids Under 5 at Home

James Campbell’s front lawn in Southfield, Michigan, was never meant to be a road. But drivers keep treating it like one. Campbell says cars following GPS directions reach what looks like a dead end at his house, then swing across his grass to get back out, and it happens on a near-daily basis.

He told WXYZ Detroit about it this week, and Parade picked up the story on Nov. 11. Campbell has two children under 5 at home, and he worries about what those tires could do with kids that young around the house.

A Horseshoe Driveway That the Apps Read as a Street

The Campbell home sits at the end of a dirt road. Its driveway is shaped like a horseshoe and can be reached from two different streets, according to a Sing Tao Daily report on the WXYZ interview. Some navigation apps show that private loop as a through road. So a driver who is told to keep going finds parked cars in the way, and the easiest route out is straight over the grass.

Parade reported that one GPS appears to treat the private driveway as a public street, and that the problem seems most common with Uber drivers. Campbell’s own security cameras have recorded many of the crossings, Sing Tao reported, and his wife has reported the problem too.

Campbell told the station the cars get onto the grass and pull right through, crossing the very spot where he was standing for the interview.

Signs at Both Ends, and Drivers Who Say the App Told Them To

Campbell has tried the obvious fixes. He put up signs at both ends of the driveway, and Sing Tao reported they have had little effect. He has also stopped drivers in the act to ask what they are doing. The answer, he says, is almost always the same: the GPS told them to go that way.

In one clip from his cameras, a driver apologized through an open window and said Uber had sent him there, according to Sing Tao’s account. Campbell’s reply to drivers has been blunt. He has asked them whether they would follow the GPS into the Detroit River, and pointed out that grass is grass and a driveway is a driveway.

He has also reported the problem to Uber and to other app companies. Sing Tao reported that the companies asked him to fill out a form inside the app, and that the crossings kept happening anyway.

Uber called the situation concerning and said it is investigating, according to Sing Tao’s report on the WXYZ story. The company also repeated that drivers must follow all traffic rules and posted signs. Uber’s own community guidelines say everyone on the platform is expected to “know and adhere to relevant laws and regulations, including traffic laws.”

Campbell’s request is simple. He told the station he hopes Uber fixes the GPS, and he wants his private driveway taken off the map as a public route, so the cars stop coming at all.

Readers who have dealt with yard damage of a different kind may remember the homeowner who found tire tracks chewing up the edge of his front lawn for weeks, or Port Arthur’s warning about cars parked on lawns. In Southfield, though, the drivers aren’t parking. They are just passing through.

What Repeated Tires Do to Grass

Parade’s report doesn’t put a dollar figure on the damage to the Campbells’ lawn. But grass that gets driven on again and again tends to suffer the same way. In a University of Maryland Extension answer about tire gouges in a lawn, horticulturist Geoff Rinehart warned that the marks likely mean “serious compaction” underneath. His advice for fall was to push the dips back toward level, aerate the area and topdress it with about half an inch of topsoil.

Rinehart said to watch the spot the next year. If it lags behind the rest of the lawn or dries out faster in a dry summer, the area should be renovated: tilled, regraded and reseeded. None of that helps much, of course, if the cars keep coming.

Who Actually Fixes a Map Mistake

So far, Campbell’s reports to the app companies haven’t changed what drivers see on their screens.

Google, for one, lets people flag exactly this kind of problem. Its “Add or fix a road” help page lists “a road that should be labeled private” among the errors users can report, alongside roads that don’t exist and roads drawn in the wrong place. The page walks through selecting the road on the map, choosing whether the change covers one segment or the whole road, and marking it private. Google notes that these edits are accepted only in some countries and regions.

What Michigan Law Says About Driving on Someone’s Land

Michigan’s trespass statute, MCL 750.552, makes it a misdemeanor to enter someone’s land after the owner has forbidden it, or to stay after being told to leave. The penalty can be up to 30 days in county jail, a fine of up to $250, or both. The drivers Campbell has stopped say the GPS sent them, which is part of what makes the problem so hard to stop.

For now, the Campbells are still watching the cameras, still stopping cars, and still waiting for an update that takes a dirt-road driveway off the list of streets. Until then, the front lawn of a Southfield family with two small children keeps doing double duty as a shortcut.

This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.

Image: Famartin – CC BY-SA 4.0/Wikimedia Commons