Another blame the satnav story.
Lauren Smee, who passed her road test three months before the accident, was driving in the dark when she approached a roundabout. Her navigation system told her to take the first left turn.
She failed to notice that it was an exit slip road and drove down it on to the A27, near Castle Goring, West Sussex.
Her Ford Ka collided head-on with a BMW driving in the correct direction.
Okay, sad though this story is, it is not the fault of the satnav, it is the fault of the driver. If a person was giving directions, they would also state that she should take the first exit off the roundabout, because, they, like the developers of satnav software assume a basic level of competence in the driver. It should not be necessary to state that you don’t drive the wrong way down a slip road, because that is not the first exit.
All this tells us is that this driver was inexperienced and placed too much reliance on technology and not enough on common sense and her own observation and awareness. A fairly common problem, it seems. These things happen from time to time, but it is driver error and not the fault of the technology – and a satnav gives a visual representation of the road layout with the route clearly marked and you can be sure that it would not have shown a route down the wrong carriageway of the A27.
Miss Smee’s mother, Penny, said on Thursday that young drivers had to be extremely careful when using satnavs.
She called for training on them to be introduced as part of driving lessons.
Yup, here we go. I’m just waiting for someone to want to “raise awareness”…
“Yup, here we go. I’m just waiting for someone to want to “raise awareness”…”
And then set up a ‘charity’ and apply for Govt funding …
It’s a well-trodden route nowadays.
You seem to have the measure of it 😉
What I want to know is, given the R.T.A sais something like; “No screen carrying moving pictures shall be in view of the driver”, how did these things ever get INTO vehicles?
Na, good. Anyone want to bet how short it will be, before some arse in the Mail, for it is always the Mail, suggeste these things “should be banned”?
Or am I already too late?
Whatever happened to the coroners verdict “Death by misadventure”?
Here’s a training outline for all novice users:
1. Turn off the sound.
2. Use it as a scrolling map.
3. Apply intelligence, because maps don’t have any.
How much should I charge the Government for this and how to I spin it out to a three-day course?
A three-day course? You lack ambition. I’m drafting a five day intensive induction, with optional coaching for six months afterwards, and an e-learning option. Written on proprietary software that requires a license to be used to run.
😀
You two will make a great team. Perhaps you should set up a consultancy for work in the public sector. 😈
“How much should I charge the Government for this and how to I spin it out to a three-day course?”
Start by calling yourself something like ‘Satnav Concern’. Ker-ching.
A friend son passed his test last year, and his mother told me how it was important that she bought him a SatNav because his sense of direction was so poor.
I managed to persuade her that he didn’t need any more distractions as a new driver, and that by the time he had lost himself a couple of times he would have learnt how to plan a journey properly.
He has not been given the SatNav (yet), but he has moved flat so that he can walk to work….
That kind of attitude is so defeatist and sad. I know two women who are so under-confident that one will only drive to places where she knows, the other won’t use motorways or three lane A roads because she has been scared by them since the driving test. The former once even left her car at home and got a taxi to a club 60 miles away for a party, not so she could drink as she doesn’t touch the stuff, but simply because she wasn’t familiar with the roads. The latter says she doesn’t like fast roads because she can’t use her wing mirrors and doesn’t like taking her eyes off the road to read road signs at speed.
When hearing them talk about such things, I always think that perhaps the driving test they took was a bit too easy. 😉
XX Dick Puddlecote says:
When hearing them talk about such things, I always think that perhaps the driving test they took was a bit too easy. ;)XX
You only have to watch them, from a safe distance, on a Saturday or a bank holiday weekend in Tesco with a shopping trtolley, to start wondering if they got their licence from collecting five tokens from the corn-flakes box.
Remindes me of Monty Pythons; “It is not a cat licence, it is a dog licence, with “dog” scribbled out and “cat” written in, in purple crayon!”
Sounds like not having a Sat-Nav is restricting their road use, and is therefore a net contributor to road safety.
If you’re not entirely sure that you are taking the right exit, to give yourself more time to work it out, why not just…go round again? It’s free!
I find it utterly baffling the number of people I see on my commute with sat-navs clearly in use. My theory is that they cannot ALL be unfamiliar with the journey – it’s peak time traffic after all; the majority are surely going to and from work like myself, but they have become so dependent on them that they allow themselves to be guided by it even on journeys they are familiar with!
Similarly, I am amazed that so many peole choose to mount their units almost squarely in the middle of their windscreens. I cannot abide ANYTHING obstructing my view – even an air-freshener dangling from the rearview – so I cannot see how drivers with their sat-navs mounted high on the screen can possibly NOT be distracted.
As to the story, it is of course utterly tragic, but not surely an indicator that young drivers should be taught how to use sat-navs. It is surely evidence that drivers should not be allowed to pass until they are thoroughly tested on their motorway driving abilities. I, like DP above, am stunned by the number of supposedly ‘experienced’, older drivers who shy away from motorways because they find them scary or because they are put off by their own inexperience. Driving with fear is just as dangerous, IMHO, as driving with anger.
Like Richard below, I use it on passive mode to alert me about the revenue cameras. it is an aid, a very useful aid. it did not cause this driver to take the wrong exit – it was giving the correct instruction.
Or maybe they have it on to inform them about abnormal traffic disruption, such as emergency roadworks or an accident, and *then* to suggest an alternative route. In which case the satnav should have a semi-passive mode for that purpose.
I can’t imagine *driving* to work every day myself, anyway. I simply don’t function sufficiently well at that time of the morning. Crossing the road on the way to the railway station is mental gymnastics enough, thank you.
“In which case the satnav should have a semi-passive mode for that purpose.”
It does. Just turn it on and don’t plan a route. You get a scrolling map and all the alerts, but no spoken visual or directions. I use mine a lot like this.
(Tomtom GO 720, other models may differ.)
Starship Fighter: “the majority are surely going to and from work like myself”
I sometimes use the satnav on a familiar journey (not my commute, admittedly) – it’s because it beeps reminders about the locations of speed cameras 🙂
I’m a big fan of the satnav, but people need to remember that it’s a driving *aid*, not an infallible instructor.
Ditto.
Anyone want to bet how short it will be, before some arse in the Mail, for it is always the Mail, suggeste these things “should be banned”?”
I would be inclined to agree with such a request. And while they’re at it ban the use of mobile phones (AND enforce it…), and for good measure, high power stereo systems. Then drivers might actually have time to LOOK OUT THE BLOODY WINDOW, and concentrate on their driving. That should reduce the number of SMIDSY incidents…
Angry, pissed off, and with a chip on my shoulder??? Too fucking right…
No, absolutely not. I use them as a driving aid and I fully expect to be allowed to do so. I vigorously object to being restricted by the stupidity of others. And I would repeal the mobile phone ban, too. If someone causes an accident, then prosecute them for driving without due care and attention that is what the existing law was there for.
Ban them? You’re joking, surely. I have found mine to be the best safety aid to city driving I can remember. I used to go to Bristol a lot on business. Finding places in the city was a nightmare of driving with the street map on the passenger seat and looking between that and the street signs on the buildings. With the satnav, I keep my eyes on the road and my attention on the hazards, and I arrive relaxed and in one piece.
Banning something just because a few muppets can’t use it correctly would lead to the banning of most things, frankly – starting with all forms of motor transport.
I think there is some basic cognitive failure going on. My Tomtom says “go left on the roundabout, first exit”, not “first available bit of tarmac that looks like it might lead somewhere”. The clue is in the word “exit”, and if that causes problems for a driver, they shouldn’t be there in the first place.
Unfortunately, the curent driving test doesn’t screen for stupidity.
Ah, was just going to blog this when I noticed you had already. Couple of further points: since the police officer said the first legal left is Titnore Lane it seems she went east down the westbound exit ramp at the southern roundabout here. That’s quite a sharp left to go down there, and I thought those layouts were designed deliberately to make turning the wrong way down a slip road unnatural. Then there’s the fact that she’d have been going down a single lane passing a bus stop on the right hand side, and though she may not have noticed in the dark that the lettering was upside down buses never stop to pick up passengers on the right. Finally, this:
Pc Medlycott said that once Miss Smee was on the A27 she might have thought she was travelling the correct way along a single-carriageway route.
Where in the UK do you join a dual carriageway from the right? Merging major roads, yes, perhaps a few, but I’d be surprised if there are any slip roads that feed joining traffic on anywhere other than lane one. Nor would there be any single carriageways that have another single carriageway to the left with traffic going in the same direction.
Yes, she was a very inexperienced driver but in the end she has control and responsibility for the car, not the satnav. They’re a damn useful driver aid but half the trick with satnavs is knowing when to use your own judgement instead. The other half is not allowing them to stop you making your own observations. Sadly it seems she misunderstood what it was telling her and kept the faith with those misunderstood instructions even though there were enough things that might have rung alarm bells and told her something was very wrong.
Tragic, but absolutely not the fault of the satnav.
Edited to add: we have these down here. I always thought it was a bit of OTT Aussie nannying, but maybe not.
XX Where in the UK do you join a dual carriageway from the right? Merging major roads, yes, perhaps a few, but I’d be surprised if there are any slip roads that feed joining traffic on anywhere other than lane one. Nor would there be any single carriageways that have another single carriageway to the left with traffic going in the same direction.XX
What? You are expecting logical thinking as well????
I would even go so far as to say that the satnav was entirely irrelevant. It was giving the correct instruction but she got confused in the dark and made an awkward turn against the natural traffic flow. You don’t need a satnav to do that – drivers have managed it before and will again. This is a typical example of scaremongering and shoddy reporting by the Telegraph.
Having had to find my way in unfamiliar territory both before and after the invention of the sat-nav, it is my opinion that they make driving far safer. Trying to find your way via road signs and memorised map reading leads to far more errors than navigating by sat-nav. The second that you take a wrong turn the sat-nav tells you to turn around, that must surely be a clue that you have taken a wrong turn.
I agree entirely. I have found them far more useful than paper maps – especially on a bike.
XX Having had to find my way in unfamiliar territory both before and after the invention of the sat-nav, it is my opinion that they make driving far safer. XX
I have not seen any actual figures, (probably because it NEVER fucking HAPPENED, You don’t count something that is not there) but how often were the news papers once a month at LEAST, (of those we even get to HEAR of), full of “Stupid bitch drives car into Irish sea because the Shell map told her there was a road there”?
Come back and show me more such reports from BEFORE satnav, than we get WITH satnav, and your, and all others that have a theory to claim that they are safer, will be prooved. Other than that, it ios a crock of shite.
I wonder how many of these “Oh, I ended up here because my satnav told me” stories are really just drivers who can’t or won’t take the responsibility for doing something so catastrophically stupid as driving into the sea. In the past there was simply nobody else to blame but themselves and they had to take it, but I think it’s possible that the frequency of stupid is not much different from what it’s always been and all that’s changed is that many people now have a small electronic box to blame it on. As Longrider said above, people have made exactly the same kind of mistakes as the girl in this story before satnavs came along. Are there now more or fewer such incidents? I expect it’s hard to know without some solid research with police stats, and since nobody’s ever recorded all the low speed bingles apart from the individual insurance companies that end up paying out you’d still miss all the ones where some tool turned left into somebody’s garden wall. At the moment all we can say is that there are plenty of satnav blame reports in the press, but then we all know how much the dead tree mob need easy stories to beat up and this is a fucking gimme for them.
As to whether a satnav makes it safer, I’d say that depends entirely on the individual driver. There are some drivers who are made less safe by having a stanav, but to make them more safe you’d probably need to remover the steering wheel, pedals and gearstick, if not just put them on the bus and done with it. A responsible driver using one as an aid so that s/he doesn’t have to try to remember directions and look for street names and can concentrate on the high priority driving tasks (I suspect Longrider could give us all a lecture on C.O.A.S.T. 😉 ) is probably safer.
XX but I think it’s possible that the frequency of stupid is not much different from what it’s always been and all XX
I have lived around seas, rivers, docks and other waters all my life, have worked on them, with them, next to them, as seaman, trawlerman, copper, all my working life, and until sat navs were all the rage, NEVER have I heard of any one ACCIDENTALY driving off the end of a bloody pier.
And why is it only Britain that appear to have this problem?
I can find NOTHING similar in the German, Swedish, Norwegian (LOTS of bloody water THERE, I can tell you!), Danish or Dutch media.
No disrespect, FT, but the whole lifetime’s experience of one individual is still a comparatively microscopic sample size. I can’t help feeling that the UK’s quayside warning sign, which shows a car going off a quayside into the water and has been in use for a while when I took my test twenty years ago, suggests it did happen. As for it just being Brits, this story of a couple of Swedes who went to Carpi in northern Italy instead of the island of Capri says otherwise. I think it’s less likely to be a British problem than that the British media have got fixated on the issue.
The amount of people driving into harbours is so minuscule as to be statistically insignificant. Some people drive like idiots. Always have, always will. Nothing to do with satnavs and everything to do with the driver. As AE has pointed out, idiot drivers and lazy journalists looking for a bit of sensationalism have latched onto them as an excuse.
XX I think it’s less likely to be a British problem than that the British media have got fixated on the issue. XX
I will give you THAT point. I did actualy let the idea cross my mind. But I had already “sent”, and my computer thingy is having alzheimers, or something, at present, and it is a REAL pain in the arse to send, let alone edit.
I can’t give you any links or anything but I can tell you and no doubt LR could confirm from his own experience, that people turning off the road on to the railway at level crossings was fairly common before sat navs, it still happens but I’ve never known anyone blame it on that, presumably because it would be ridiculous, no sat nav is going to tell you to drive on to a railway. People have always done daft things in cars and no doubt always will.
Sorry that was meant for FT.
I can recall such incidents back in the early nineties, long before satnavs. Some people are just too stupid to have a driving licence. As AE has pointed out several times now, it is just a device to distract people from the real culprit – the nut behind the wheel.
Shat-Navs are DANGEROUS
They should be banned in any developed coutry with a half0decent road syatem and mapping.
I’ve nerly rear-ended or otherwise collided with sevreal complete fuckwits who were obviously paying attention to the toy and NOT THE ROAD.
Inculding speeding up/slowing/down/switching lanes in a six-lane section of dual carriageway with a 50 limit, and the classic – coming to rest in the white-hatched area between two slip-roads at an exit junction.
And I get a GOOD view of the road ahead, and try desperatrely not to get too colse to any car in front – mainly because connecting with my over 2 tonnes of Land-Rocver is going to be messy.
Mind you, there are people who havn’t got any clue at all, even with a paper map!
Why a ban? Why do we assume that any new problem, even if not paying enough attention on the road is *not* new, needs a new law banning something? Why aren’t we all demanding that the police use the laws that already exist? I haven’t driven on UK roads since I left several years ago but unless much has changed Driving Without Due Care and Attention is probably underused. Instead of asking for a new law that’s going to be an absolute bastard to enforce what with all the navigation apps on smartphones these days let’s tell Mr Plod and the CPS to take their respective hands off it and prosecute some inattentive drivers with the legislation they’ve already got.
Your quite right in claiming that prosecuting for driving without DCA would change things, but it wont happen, less and less patrol cars are seen, roadside checks are rare-unlike France and Italy for instance-and in a rural area where I live mobile phones are used with impunity by all and sundry, having as I have had a forty tonner actually connect with my rear end whilst the driver compared his delivery notes with whoever was on the other end of the phone and very nearly put of a M-way by an idiot who slowly came across at me whilst having what appeared to be a row with someone prosecution isn’t working, sat-navs sadly fall into the same category, I have one and do not feel that its as safe as i would like so only use when strictly required.
But the latest are 12 bloody inch screens what next 3-D , how can a 12″ screen be safe installed below the line of vision on a dashboard, and just to finish what about the multi-taskers phone plus laptop, not as rare as you might think.
XX Driving Without Due Care and Attention is probably underused. XX
Should they not be “out catching rapists, or something?”
And THERE you have your answer.
Think about it.
You either want the police to enforce traffic law. Or you want them to do a “catch “real” criminals”.
The problem is, the public can not make their bloody mind up WHICH they want.
You either want the police to enforce traffic law. Or you want them to do a “catch “real” criminals”.
Both, of course. 🙂 But actually it’s simpler than that because I want them to catch real criminal drivers rather than devoting a lot of resources into enforcing technical offences. Consider these situations all on the same bit of freeway: car occupied by driver only, who is not wearing a seatbelt; car exceeding the speed limit by 15km/h or so in clear, dry conditions with no other traffic; car failing to maintain lane discipline or safe distance from vehicle in front. What kind of offence do you want them to prioritise? The technical kind where any risk is to the driver alone or the kind where someone’s behaviour is putting others at unnecessary risk? I think most people would agree that the latter is more important, but policies have dictated that it’s the former that tends to get done a lot. To paraphrase McNamara, they have made important what can easily be measured rather than working out how best to measure what’s really important.
O.K. I concede your point. In a perect world…. 🙄
Of course, speeding here, Autobahn, not “in town”, is normally around 100 to 200 Km per hour OVER the speed limit. When it is “only” araound 15, or so, then we normally just give a warning.
Seat belts come usually as part of other ofences. I don’t know any one that does drivers (again, Autobahn), “just” for not wearing a seat belt, or similar “no victim” offences.
But then, the local authoritys, or no other Government department, gest a LOOK in at the money. So there is no financial preasure from small time wannabee mayors that fancy buying a new municipal flower garden, or paying for one of their many bastards to attend a posh school, or whatever it is local politicians do with the fine money they get thrown at them.
No they are not.
No, they should not. Why should I and the millions of drivers who use these devices as an aid to navigation on unfamiliar roads without incident be penalised because some drivers are stupid and are looking for something to blame and the authoritarian control freaks think that their opinions should be forced upon me. We do not call for bans on this blog just because we disapprove of something.
Quite. These people have been around since before the invention of the steering wheel. Fuck all to do with sat navs.
So, while you have your bansturbation hat on, I suggest you ban everything that may cause the driver distraction, starting with the speedometer, fuel gauge, warning lights, tachometer, paper maps and stereo system…
Or, you could acknowledge that actually, most of us manage perfectly well and are perfectly safe.
I’d vote for banning speedos. The damn thing can only tell you how fast you’re going, not whether that speed is too fast for the situation. Your body does a better job of that. Feeling excited or getting a bit of an adrenalin buzz? Then you’re probably driving too fast, even if you’re actually under the speed limit. Speed is a Goldilocks thing where you kind of know when you’re going too fast or too slow and the aim is to get it just right. The value of ‘just right’ in mph or km/h or meters per second or however you want to measure it varies from one second to the next depending on what’s going on and what the conditions are. The speedo can’t tell you what ‘just right’ is right now, and at freeway speeds checking it means travelling a minimum of three car lengths and probably more without looking at the road, so what’s the bloody point in drilling drivers to take their attention off the road and onto the speedo every 3-4 seconds?
Okay, I’m exaggerating a bit and wouldn’t really ban speedos, though I do believe their importance for anything other than complying with often arbitrarily chosen limits is hugely overstated. I look at them as a kind of vehicular appendix – generally harmless though in rare instances it seems likely that some unlucky soul will be checking the speedo when it was critical that they were checking the road. But you can construct an argument for banning practically anything and since it seems likely that some people, perhaps people who are only one wrong move from a suspension, could look at their speedos more often than is wise – every other second would mean 25% or more of their time not watching the road – it’s not hard to make one for not having speedos. But only if you ignore the fact that almost all the time a speedo check is perfectly harmless, most drivers will instinctively do them less often when there’s more going on outside that needs attention, and you have to be phenomenally unlucky for something to happen out of the blue right at the very instant you happen to be looking at the dial. Ditto satnavs, apart from that I’d argue they provide more useful information than the speedo (though most provide speed displayed next to the map as well).
There’s an argument there for combining the two instruments – satnav and speedo. Personally, I rarely look at the speedo, preferring to use my own judgement of what is an appropriate speed for the conditions.
AE’s ‘Goldilocks’ idea is a very good one. I’ve never heard it put that way before, but it describes the situation exactly. When I think about it, I NEVER look at the speedo to see if I am doing a safe speed. I know what a safe speed is, and I only EVER look at the speedo to make sure I am complying with the law (or not, and if not, how much not). Therefore, for me, speed limits and speedometers are a distraction from safe driving. I don’t think I am a special case, either. Most people have an instinctive knowledge of what is safe. How to reach the idiots who can’t make that judgement, aye there’s the rub.
They are contra-legal anyway with a screen in the view of the driver, are they not?
And I think paper maps are much safer.
I’ve seen far too much idiot misuse of these dangerous toys, thank you.
IF they are going to be allowed then I think that people need training in their use, as they need training in how to drive and control any existing road vehicle, using the instruments provided.
Sorry, really sorry, but they seem to encourage really bad, dangerous even, driving.
“I’ve seen far too much idiot misuse of these dangerous toys, thank you.”
Without wishing to contradict you, I’d like to hear of some examples of what you mean. Apart from the scare stories in the papers such as this one, I can honestly say that I have never once seen someone driving dangerously because of a satnav. (Mobile phones, yes, millions of times.) Examples of ‘idiot misuse of these dangerous toys’, and how you now that the use of a satnav was to blame. I’d genuinely like to know, because it runs 180deg counter to my own experience.
And mine.
Me too – I love my Sat Nav! 🙂
Nobody has mentioned that the thing MUST have warned her that she was driving the wrong way and she ignored that too…?
Chalk one up for Darwin…
No. My car has a digital speedometer and dashboard readouts. That is a screen in the view of the driver. So are reversing screens. They are driving aids, they are not television or games and the legislation is not being used to ban them because, just for once, it seems that government recognises that the wording in the legislation can be suitably interpreted to allow for these devices – I mean, for once we get common sense. They are an aid to navigation and a damn sight safe to use than trying to read a paper map on the move.
Nope. They are a distraction to the driver unless he stops and you cannot guarantee that, so we should ban them just in case someone tries to drive while map reading from a road atlas on the passenger seat.
Now you are taking the piss, frankly.
No, they don’t. Dangerous drivers don’t need any encouragement. They, and idiot journalists are blaming a passive black box for their idiocy. I manage to use them without any problem whatsoever. So do millions of other drivers covering thousands of miles each.
So you may think that they seem to encourage bad driving, but what you may think they seem to do is neither here nor there, is it? My vehicle, my responsibility, my choice – and, no I don’t need training in how to use them, thanks very much.
You are way off piste on this one, Greg.
It is my OPINION that they are far more dangerous than even trying to use a mobile phone when driving.
But that is only my opinion …
I think I’ll leve it there.
During the 1990s the TRRL carried out a number of experiments on the use of mobile phones and driver cognisance. What they discovered was that a driver’s concentration was affected for up to twenty minutes after the conversation had finished – even with a hands-free device. This was because the conversation was not contextual with the driving task.
There has been no such study carried out on satnavs that I am aware of. However, not only are they contextual, the image is relatively easy to ignore during a busy driving task, using instead the voice prompts while the driver observes the road layout. Given that the information given is brief and contextual, it is highly unlikely that the same distraction will be discovered to apply as happens with mobile phones.
So, given all of that, while you are entitled to your opinion, it is not borne out by the evidence. I prefer to go with the evidence. They are perfectly safe and are an enhancement that enables the driver to navigate more simply than he can with paper maps. Technology moves on. Not everyone likes it, but that’s just too bad. You will have to get used to it. Already cars are coming pre-equipped with them. In a few years, they will be a standard fitting, as is the speedometer, fuel gauge, tachometer and all those other useful little gizmos we have become used to since the invention of the motor car – and a jolly good thing, too.
This post is very “Julia” in a way.