Satnav's are great little devices most of the time, making it easier for everyone young and old to work out how to get from A to B with a minimum of fuss. At least that's what we thought. Despite improving substantially over the last few years in terms of clarity of directions and adding features like advanced lane guidance and text-to-speech for reading out road names, it seems as though some people are still getting it wrong.
We're not talking about accidentally taking the wrong turn-off or going a junction too far at a roundabout either.
A survey by Direct Line insurance showed that from a total of 14 million drivers that use satnavs (half of the UK), 300,000 have blamed satellite navigation systems for causing them to crash, 1.5 million admitted that they've performed sudden manoeuvres simply because the device offered them a direction and 5 million have driven the wrong way down a one-way street.
Now of course everyone makes the odd mistake here and there, but the loons that are actually willing to drive through a hedge or into a river because they're instructed to 'turn left' a few meters before time have stirred groups of bored campaigners into suggesting that these devices may be putting people's lives at risk.
A spokesperson from Direct Line insurance, in lieu of picking up the "Ministry of the bleeding obvious" award from her employers, stated
"If a satnav gives you an instruction that is likely to endanger other road users, ignore it."
Great advice there, though if you're the kind of person that needs to be told that sort of thing you probably shouldn't be on the road anyway.
