UK.gov holds summit to stop satnav-driven smash-ups

Spend more taxpayers' money

It beats expecting the fool in the cab to look where he or she is going.

The easiest way is to simply class any accident caused by mindlessly following a satnav as dangerous driving.

Once they can't just use "Oh the woman in the dashboard told me to drive into the river" as an excuse for their idiocy either the number of accidents will fall or the stupidest 1% of drivers will have their licenses revoked.

a quicker and simpler alternative might be to insist that there's a minimum IQ required in order to pass the driving test and hold a license.

In fact, that would probably solve a lot of motoring problems, traffic incidents, reduce congestion and generally make the world a nicer place.

Plus, there'd be less idiots on the road in front of me so I can enjoy driving around instead of fearing for my life the whole time.

Old problem - old solution

ISTR there's (at least one) a small road leading from Cheddar Gorge with a small, old sign warning potential drivers: Not Suitable for Charabancs. It's been nigh-on 30 years since I frequented the area but the problem does seem to pre-date the Satnav era and the solution seems to be simple to implement.

Why not just put up a few more signs?

Minor correction...

"Last month, Confused.com said that satnavs had caused more than £203m worth of damage to drivers on UK roads in the last year, with 83 per cent of 2,000 survey respondents admitting to the site that they'd been misled by their soothingly voiced machines."

Should read:

"Last month, Confused.com said that stupid drivers had caused more than £203m worth of damage on UK roads in the last year, with 83 per cent of 2,000 survey respondents admitting to the site that they were too stupid to apply any common sense to the instructions from their soothingly voiced machines."

I use a sat nav all the time. It is a guide only, and I look up directions first to make sure I have a rought idea of where I am going. If it tells me to go the wrong way down a one way road (or similar) I ignore it. If the instructions don't match what I remember from looking it up myself, I pull over and make sure. A little common sense goes a long way. I am often told I have no common sense, but I have more than these numpties!

Not too long now...

... and we'll see signs and traffic updates and such broadcast to the boxes. That, or the things get fitted with cameras and smarts to recognise roadsigns. Wonder which'll happen first.

Simple Solution....

Don't let women drive :)

See here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39qdhbkTko4

"However, the main reasons the satnavs cause problems is because it can take months for map updates from local councils to make their way onto the gadgets."

And yet I'm still using a 2001 AA road atlas and haven't once driven over a cliff or down a footpath, or across the grassed-over former route of a now diverted road.

Updating the mapping data doesn't seem to be the main problem: it's getting people to use some common sense rather than blindly rely on technology.

All excellent points

However, it's very unlikely that politicians are going to enact rules that punish stupidity as that will directly affect the kind of person who'd otherwise unthinkingly vote for them. And I'm not even sure I'm joking...

Reclassifying

This idea just won't work. The signposts for one town near me already try to steer the traffic around a lengthy bypass while satnavs sends you straight through the middle - because it's a lot shorter and doesn't take any longer.

And I've, er, heard that, apparently, some of these expensive map updates are available on those torrent websites. If I knew how to get them I'd have downloaded current free maps for the whole of Europe. But I don't know how to find them, officer, so I can't.

Root cause

1. Map updates aren't free

2. Updates aren't available to older kit

3. Map reports take years to get fixed

Solution? Something that's free to use, quick to fix and non-proprietary. OpenStreetMap comes to mind, but there's still a few years to go before it has complete UK road network coverage.

funny thing happened on the way home

I had to drive home on my familiar route 2hrs in the dark, and just to be different, I put my smartphone's satnav on just to keep me entertained.

I missed my junction.

Garmin & Navteq

I have what purports to be a top of the range Garmin unit, its worse that my old and much lamented BM6300, however it does use the same mapping agency, I notified them of a error 10 years ago, this, like the correspondent above, has not been corrected, despite receiving an acknowledgement.

It fails to zoom in at slow speed (despite having auto enabled), the Navteq maps have junction errors too numerous to mention, for goodness sake, they could use Streetview to sort that out, I wish I had put the money towards a better and larger smartphone and use that instead.

203 Million Pounds?

I call bullshit!

This is like 1000 drivers writing off a top-end Bentley or Ferrari; or maybe a couple crashing into a Eurofighter.

Seriously , 0.75 million pounds per day just because of sat-nav mis-direction? Or did they include the Costa Concordia in the statistics?

The solution

Build a BIG round-a-bout - think CERN here. Have no exit, or have an exit with a big "DO NOT EXIT" sign and a LOT of cops stationed there.

Put a road going to it. Allow for several places to pull out and turn around. Put signs up: "No outlet - last chance to exit - your satnav is wrong!"

Tell the sat-nav folks to randomly route people to that round-a-bout.

The smart ones will see the signs and turn around. The dumb ones get trapped on the round-a-bout. If you were nice and provided exits, then you bust them for exiting and take their license away. If you were NOT nice and provided no exits - after a while the problem sorts itself out, and you can hose the cars out and sell them again.

"satnavs had caused more than £203m worth of damage"

Wow! Anyone got a youtube vid of a satnav leaping out of the car and trashing the side of a house?

I know of at least one place where the satnav tells you one thing, and the road signs another. It's tricky trying to work out which is correct at 70mph; particularly when you know there's a reasonable chance that you won't be able to turn around for a while and you have cranky people on board™.

In case anyone's interested it's the M3/M27 south/west bound to Bournemouth - Garmin. Apologies to the person I nearly carved up whilst trying to solve the conundrum!

When I mentioned the problem to my cousin he said: "Aah, you've got a Garmin. Sorry about that!"

Then there's the Tesco Mersey mystery - we asked to find the nearest Tesco from Birkenhead (i.e. cheap petrol), and the satnav told us to drive out to sea for a few miles... Clearly thinks I have a Gibbs Aquada; sadly not! Needless to say I didn't follow that suggestion; and before anyone asks, there's no (publically known) tunnel in that area. Maybe there's a regional seat of power there, which has their own outpost ;)

Sat Navs cause no damage

"... satnavs had caused more than £203m worth of damage to drivers on UK roads in the last year.."

No they didn't - the drivers are the ones with the driving licenses, not the sat navs. Drivers are responsible for ensuring that they are driving in accordance with the law - observing road signs, that their vehicle is in roadworthy condition, etc. Inanimate driving aids have no responsibility for anything.

Lorry drivers should be using sat navs designed for their type of vehcle i.e. taking width and height restrictions into account.

All drivers must observe the laws of the country in which they are driving - this means speed limits, signage - such as width and height restrictions in metric or imperial measures, the need to carry certain spares or high visibility jackets. Drivers that don't do this can expect to face the relevant penalties.