There’s “I’m lost,” and then there’s “What country am I in?” That’s a whole other level of turned around. But one driver in Detroit got so confused, he needed to flag down Canadian authorities for help.

Detroit is the only major U.S. city directly north of a Canadian city. Because Canada’s Windsor-Essex peninsula sticks out into the Great Lakes, the city of Windsor is south across the Detroit River from Detroit.

For decades, Detroit drivers had two ways to get to Canada: the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel or the iconic Ambassador Bridge. Detroit drivers also know that you don’t want to accidentally wander onto the bridge or into the tunnel, because you’ll end up very embarrassed at the Canadian border.

Now, the Canadian government and a private U.S. company called Bridging North America are collaborating to open a second bridge between Windsor and Detroit. They broke ground on the Gordie Howe International Bridge in 2018, planning to open it in late 2025. In September, officials announced the bridge is 98% complete and pushed the opening back to early 2026. The exact date “will depend on our ongoing quality reviews, testing and commissioning.” Very soon, Detroit drivers will have to be careful of another wrong turn that could land them waiting in line to enter Canada—by accident.

A wrong turn onto the Gordie Howe bridge

I don’t know if some GPS mapping app is showing the new bridge as open, or if some truck driver just hasn’t checked the news. But this week, that trucker reportedly drove into the Gordie Howe construction site.

The site is closed to the public and even manned by security personnel. So the trucker stopped to ask for help.

According to the Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority, the driver received “direction from Bridging North America (BNA) security personnel on how to safely proceed to their intended destination of the Ambassador Bridge.” So far, so good.

The directions obviously didn’t stick. “The driver became further disoriented given the size and complexity of the construction site.”

So this disoriented truck driver wandered around, supposedly trying to find a way out of the construction site and to the Ambassador Bridge. Then they were intercepted and redirected—by the Canada Border Services Agency. That’s right, they ended up at the still-closed Canadian-side border crossing. That’s on the other side of the 1.5-mile bridge.

I am wildly curious what the truck driver thought while driving 1.5-mile on a completely empty bridge, the Detroit River flowing by beneath. Did they think they were going the right way? Did they hope no one would notice them at the border crossing? Or did they completely dismiss the directions and just follow their GPS? You and I may never know, but after causing an international incident the driver certainly has some explaining to do to somebody.