A friend emailed me the link to this story...
...well, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it :)
"A DOZY driver has been fined almost £1,000 after blindly following his sat nav down a dirt track – and getting his car stuck on a 100ft high cliff. Robert Jones, 43, was found guilty of driving without due care and attention for the blunder, after the TomTom led him down a bridle path. He is thought to be one of the first motorists in the country to be successfully prosecuted for an offence caused by the gadget. Jones only realised the error – as the sat nav maintained it was leading him down a road – when his BMW hit a fence on the brink of the cliff."
You only have to take a casual look at the photo the local paper took at the scene of the accident to realise the extent to which Mr. Jones believed his Sat Nav more than his own eyesight...
Which makes me wonder what he would have done if the Sat Nav decided to take a leaf out of Google's book...
Obviously Step 20 was one of Google's famous jokes, but what if his Sat Nav had asked him to do something like drive across the Lindisfarne Causeway at high tide? "My Sat Nav told me to do it!"
Comments
Pretty funny!
I was looking at places for a camping vacation in the States earlier this year and decided to check on Smoky Mountain National Park.
The web site specifically says in more than one place NOT to follow GPS devices, but to use the park maps instead, because the devices have been known to send people down 4-wheel drive trails, or the wrong way on one way roads.
I've always been a gadget person, yet I still don't have one of these clever devices. Perhaps I've found another reason I don't need one. Truth be told, I do pretty well with printed maps, and in the daytime can get a fair sense of direction from the position of the sun.
Besides, I can get into enough trouble all on my own. I don't a gadget to help me or to blame.
Hugs
Carla Ann
I live not terribly far from
I live not terribly far from the Park (in Knoxville, nearest large city, well we claim it to be so!). A number of years ago, shortly after Mapquest, etc. came onto the web, a nice couple showed up on our dead end street in a rather large RV. They really wanted to drive down our driveway (impossible for a vehicle that size) because Mapquest claimed that the KOA campgrounds nearest the Smokey Mountains National Park was located in our back yard....
For a number of years after that, any time we pulled directions from Google Maps, Mapquest, etc. it was followed with a cross-check against a recent Rand-McNally atlas. These days, I've stopped checking, Google Maps is almost always more accurate.
Janice (Old enough to remember when being able to re-fold the map was an important skill....)
I think Mr Spock said it all
Illogical Captain - comma deliberately ommitted.
Back in the dim, dark days when I had to work for a living, we had a saying; 'A computer is just an overgrown calculator run by an overpriced virus.'
SatNavs are just computers and, like fire, can be wonderful servants, but fearsome masters.
Susie
That's priceless!
I've heard of others blindly following those devices and getting in trouble, but that is the first time I've heard of the hapless fools paying for their folly. And that Google direction bit is wonderful, I'll have to save that! Thanks!
m
They know they can survive
The sad part ...
of this is that here in the U.S. he would probably sue TomTom for a large chunk of money for negligence, and get it! I'm just waiting for someone blindly following one of these to either get hurt or damage their vehicle and then sue the manufacturer. After all, if they can't bother to very every single mile of road in their database (and provide free continuous updates), then they're obviously at fault when someone doesn't pay attention to where they're going. Sigh.
Give me a break
Don't the Brits have a sense of humor? A 1000 pound fine? Give me a break. I once rode on the Pacific Crest Trail for miles on my motorcycle and if I had been busted by the bitch in this story, leathel injection wouldn't be harsh enough. It was November though, before the first snow and no one was with-in ten miles of where we rode, but that's another story.This is a bit of a giggle though, Arecee