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Bill Carmichael: Sat-nav road to utter stupidity
WHEN did Britain become a nation of sat-nav obsessives?
I'm as fond of electronic gadgets as the next man who has never quite grown out of toys, but this particular fad has crept up on me unawares.
There was a time only a few years ago when motorists would think nothing of driving for hundreds of miles in unfamiliar territory armed with little more than a 6.99 road map.
Now it seems many drivers are incapable of popping down to the local shop without switching on an infernal – and expensive – machine to tell them how to get there.
It is all part of the infantalisation of the British public. People are increasingly incapable of getting anything done without detailed instructions from above – whether it be nannying from Whitehall or a satellite circling the earth to tell them where to go.
For example, I witnessed an extraordinary scene close to my home. There is a short cut – essentially a rat run – that takes you from the outskirts, across the canal, alongside an old cotton spinning mill and into the centre of town.
But for almost three years the road has been closed because the mill is being converted into luxury apartments – but no one has told the sat-nav system.
So on my walks down by the canal I regularly see motorists screech to a halt at the road closed sign, mouth an obscenity at the sat-nav before reversing and heading off back the way they came.
But this one particular guy wasn't so easily put off. He slalomed past two "Road Closed Ahead" signs and sped over the narrow swing bridge across the canal before slamming on his brakes in front of a steel barrier completely blocking the road.
By now a sign as big as a king-size bed reading "ROAD CLOSED" filled his windscreen.
He frowned, looked at the sign, then the sat-nav and then back to the sign. He saw me looking at him and opened the window with a look of complete bewilderment.
"The road is closed to traffic," I said helpfully.
"Sat-nav," he replied shaking his head.
"Yes, I know your sat-nav says you can go down there, but it's wrong. The road's closed."
"Sat-nav," he said again pointing to the device on the dashboard.
Then something incredible happened. The sat-nav was telling him to drive forwards; his eyes were telling him that was impossible. Given the choice between the two he decided to believe the gadget over his own senses. He put the car into first gear, released the handbrake and moved forwards.
It was as if he expected the steel barrier and the Road Closed sign to disappear like a mirage once he got closer to it. After all the sat-nav couldn't possibly be wrong could it? His bumper touched the barrier and the corrugated steel groaned as he inched ahead.
By this point a small crowd had gathered on the canal bank to look on in amazement. I wondered if he was going to write off his car by crashing through the barrier, but eventually he stopped and screamed at the sat-nav: "I can't go any further forward!"
He then slammed the car into reverse, shot back over the bridge at speed and then roared off, smoke coming from the tyres, as the audience clapped and waved.
You may think this far-fetched – but it is far from unusual. Earlier this year a 43-year-old from Doncaster drove his BMW down a steep mountain path near Todmorden because his sat-nav insisted it was a road. He only stopped when he hit a wire fence, leaving his car teetering over a cliff edge.
And drivers obeying their sat-navs to get from Swaledale to Wensleydale regularly get stuck on a steep, twisty track near a village – appropriately called Crackpot – and have to be rescued by local farmers.
The moral is not to put too much trust in technology, which will always, eventually, go wrong. And here's a slogan that applies to many modern-day drivers: "Switch on sat-nav; switch off brain."
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Sunday 12 February 2012
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