Photo: Lewis Finney on Twitter
Navigation apps are fantastic tools, and more often than not, they come in extremely handy when driving in a region where we’ve never been before.
But on the other hand, nothing – and when we say nothing, we really mean it – should be taken for granted, as the way navigation apps work makes them very prone to errors like directing you to the wrong road.
And while such a mistake may seem minor at first, it could end up having major consequences.
A recent case in the United Kingdom is just living proof in this regard. A lorry driver who was using satellite navigation to find their way through Middlebrook ended up on a tight road with a dead-end. Needless to say, such a large vehicle having nowhere to go on a narrow street isn’t necessarily good news, so the driver figured out quite fast that they had to turn.
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that such a maneuver is very, very difficult. The local media says the driver even asked the local residents to move their cars to have more room to turn, but in the end, this didn’t help much.
Long story short, the lorry ended up hitting and damaging two houses on Napier Drive during the attempt, but fortunately, nobody was injured.
Leaving aside the horror experience, it’s easy to believe the one to blame was the navigation app. After all, it was the one sending the driver to a cul-de-sac, right?
First of all, we don’t know for sure if the driver was using truck-optimized navigation. If they weren’t, then the navigation app wasn’t able to provide appropriate guidance anyway, as it had no clue the vehicle was so large.
But at the end of the day, even if the right piece of software can sometimes offer inaccurate guidance, no app in the world can remain 100 percent up-to-date with what’s happening on the road. Imminent road closures are unpredictable, as incidents like accidents could end up forcing drivers to take a different route without the navigation app knowing in advance.
And while such a mistake may seem minor at first, it could end up having major consequences.
A recent case in the United Kingdom is just living proof in this regard. A lorry driver who was using satellite navigation to find their way through Middlebrook ended up on a tight road with a dead-end. Needless to say, such a large vehicle having nowhere to go on a narrow street isn’t necessarily good news, so the driver figured out quite fast that they had to turn.
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that such a maneuver is very, very difficult. The local media says the driver even asked the local residents to move their cars to have more room to turn, but in the end, this didn’t help much.
Long story short, the lorry ended up hitting and damaging two houses on Napier Drive during the attempt, but fortunately, nobody was injured.
Leaving aside the horror experience, it’s easy to believe the one to blame was the navigation app. After all, it was the one sending the driver to a cul-de-sac, right?
First of all, we don’t know for sure if the driver was using truck-optimized navigation. If they weren’t, then the navigation app wasn’t able to provide appropriate guidance anyway, as it had no clue the vehicle was so large.
But at the end of the day, even if the right piece of software can sometimes offer inaccurate guidance, no app in the world can remain 100 percent up-to-date with what’s happening on the road. Imminent road closures are unpredictable, as incidents like accidents could end up forcing drivers to take a different route without the navigation app knowing in advance.
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