Sat-Nav leads to ambulance problem

I notice that I have already penned seven entries relating to problems with drivers and their sat-navs. Well here is another one in my area, this time involving an ambulance. It happened on Christmas Eve, a time when there were huge worries about icy patches on minor roads. A privately run ambulance was taking an elderly couple and family member home to Polperro from Plymouth's Derriford Hospital. It would seem that they had another patient to drop off because they evidently went to Liskeard first. Now I can tell you that there is just one sensible way to get from Liskeard to Polperro after dark (this happened in the evening) and with the possibility of icy stretches. From Liskeard you head west along the Dobwalls Bypass, at the roundabout take the left turn on to the St Austell road and soon you will be arriving at the Taphouses. Here one turns left on to the B3359 which heads south down through Pelynt before terminating at a T junction where one turns right on the A387 Looe to Polperro road, the last named village just being a short distance away. I know it's possible to turn off in Dobwalls itself and take the road on the watershed between the East and West Looe Rivers and on through Duloe but then there is the potentially tricky hill down to Sandplace and one would have to climb up again from Looe on the '387'.

So what did the ambulance driver do? He engaged the sat-nav and disengaged his brain (I'm not sure whether he had the latter though). The sat-nav I suspect would have sent him along the twisty hilly road through St Keyne and on to Duloe. Now we know that the ambulance had its mishap near Sowden's Bridge which is one of the crossing points on the West Looe River. According to the newspaper the vehicle slid backwards down the icy hill before hitting a wall and tree and ending in a ditch. No injuries luckily but damage to the side door meant the passengers were trapped inside. This happened at about 6.30 pm but with lack of signal in the valley it wasn't until 8.16 pm that emergency services located them and over two hours after that before they got stretchered out of the stricken ambulance.

You might gather from what I have written that I have a fair idea of the geography of the area concerned and sat-nav or no sat-nav would realise the best route option in the circumstances. Even if the chump driving the ambulance was less familiar than I with that locality why didn't he have OS Landranger map 201 with him to get a better idea of the options available from Liskeard. The small number of roads that cross the West Looe River are narrow and steep - I happen to know that but the information is readily discernible from the map. It stands to reason that the bottom of the valley would be potentially icy - water gravitates downhill does it not, the narrow lanes deep in the valley would get very little sunlight in them to melt any ice, there would be no incentive for council gritters to go there as it is sparsely populated and, as events proved, there would be little chance of getting a signal if an emergency occurred. A further point: in the admittedly unlikely event of the ambulance meeting a vehicle in the lanes either party backing up in the dark would not have been a nice experience.

Compare this with the alternative route I suggested earlier in the piece. My way would almost certainly have been gritted throughout, it would be relatively level particularly once on the ridge road that heads in the direction of Pelynt, not sure about in Polperro itself but the rest of the route should be in an area where there is a good signal and the road is reasonably wide (by Cornish standards anyway!).

Interestingly someone in my village told me some time ago about another ambulance incident where the driver got it wrong. This person was coming back to Gunnislake from Derriford and this was OK but prior to her part of the journey someone else had to be dropped off in Plymouth, in Stoke if I remember rightly. Stoke is south west of Derriford so the patient was somewhat surprised when the ambulance departed in the direction of Plympton - the opposite direction! Despite his protestations the crew just followed the sat-nav: perhaps they had been given duff information or there was a duplication of street names, I don't know. As far as they were concerned the technology was right and the old chap wrong. Fortunately in the end the gentleman concerned was delivered to his home address. Whether it was the same idiots who caused the mayhem near Sowden's Bridge I don't know.

Even in good weather and broad daylight I wouldn't have thought the expedition through the lanes after Duloe would have been sensible, after dark on last Christmas Eve it was the height of stupidity. Yes sat-navs have their uses but a (so called) professional driver relying 100% on this technology whatever the circumstances should not be on the road. The stupidity shown could have had far more serious consequences.

Another sat-nav mishap

It was at the start of this week that I was on one of my hobby-horses: sat-navs and the mishaps that relate to their use. The latest of these that I've heard about occurred at lovely Maenporth beach just south of Falmouth. This time it wasn't a case of being wedged in a lane but it seems that the sat-nav sent the French driver and his monster articulated lorry down the little road that passes Maenporth when perhaps it shouldn't have done; the driver used the beach to try and turn around and in doing so the tractor unit of the lorry got somewhat stuck in the sand! Locals with shovel and tractor assistance managed to get him free in the end.

Thanks to the 'Falmouth Packet' there is a short video here from which you can appreciate the driver's predicament.

Possible help to resolve sat-nav woes

I've had several rants on this blog about sat-navs so it is nice now to have a bit of good news regarding the problems there have been with them. By and large they seem to work for the private motorist although I did relate a particular incident in East Devon where the car arrived at a brook when trying to traverse a totally unsuitable road: the car's owner had the embarrassment of burning out the clutch when trying to retrieve the situation. No it's their use by lorry drivers who seem to think that what has been designed for the humble car is also applicable to their needs that has really raised my ire.

At long long last there appears to be progress on sorting out this issue and this is thanks to the counties of Somerset and Suffolk. Software has been designed that can be downloaded onto a sat-nav which will take into account unsuitable roads for commercials and also such matters as weight and height restrictions. Who would be better than the local highways department to know all about such things. As I understand it this is a trial in these two areas at the moment and I would hope that it could be rolled out nationally in due course. Of course adjoining counties would need to talk to each other to ensure compliance where roads cross their shared boundaries.

Previously I had written that I understood from radio phone-ins etc that there were sat-navs for lorries already. If this is the case then it's possible that they are more expensive and if it's the HGV drivers footing the bill they may well be going for the cheapest option. My feelings about misdirected lorries aren't arising from any personal experiences, it's just that when I see something so obviously wrong I want to make a bit of a fuss about it! If you think I'm a bit OTT on this then read this piece here about lorries finishing up at a crematorium in Wales through being misguided by their sat-navs. Search around the blogs and many other examples of unintended consequences come to light.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: any damage to roads or buildings caused by juggernauts going where such vehicles shouldn't go must be paid for by the haulier, there is no room for compromise on this issue.

Sat-Nav leads car driver into brook

If you look down the list of subjects to the right of my entries you will note under 'Sat-Navs' that I have sounded off before about the problems they can bring. It's usually tales of juggernauts getting wedged in country lanes or knocking off the corners of buildings that make the headlines but not this time. Late yesterday evening a car driver phoned for help because her car had got stuck in the Grindle Brook, a stream near Woodbury Salterton in East Devon that eventually finds its way into the River Clyst. To add to her embarrassment in trying to extricate herself she had burnt out the clutch. Looking at my trusty Landranger map (sheet 192) I can see exactly where this calamity occurred: there is a little uncoloured road running north-south, the only one crossing the brook. Now the combination of night time driving and an uncoloured road on the Ordnance Survey map really is something to be avoided. The trouble with the Sat-Nav technology is that though you can rely on it most of the time there is going to be the odd occasion when it will fail and obviously in this case at some cost.

It is so so easy to become wedded to the idea that clever technology is foolproof when of course it isn't. Maps have always fascinated me and my shelves groan under the weight of them. Bearing in mind that most of my driving is on reasonably familiar territory I don't see myself needing a Sat-Nav just yet. Reverting to the mishap at Woodbury Salterton the Sat-Nav route if negotiable would only have saved two or three miles. Use the technology as a tool by all means but don't depend on it 100%.

American interest in Sat-Nav problems

Wedmore, a village not in my two counties but in neighbouring Somerset, lies not far west of Wells and where two 'B' roads cross. In the normal course of events it wouldn't show on my radar but a story concerning it in the 'Western Morning News' is the reason for this entry. Like many other villages and small towns it has fallen prey to the Sat-Nav problem. Once again local homeowners are subjected to noise, pollution and property damage as Sat-Navs direct lorries through a rural settlement. But what makes this WMN piece particularly interesting is that reporters from American(!) newspapers have picked up on Wedmore's difficulties and are running the SatNav story.

I've expressed my irritation before about the lack of progress in resolving the Sat-Nav trouble with respect to commercial traffic. On a radio phone-in one gentleman had suggested that his by no means top of the range Sat-Nav could be tuned for the benefit of lorries so that they weren't sent down country lanes and I've seen models specifically designed for lorries on the internet so the problem is solvable.

Meanwhile what happens insurance wise regarding homes and shops that get damaged by the juggernauts? No property owner should have to pay a penny towards repairs or have any loading applied to his cover. Government, councils and transport operators - just get the problem sorted.

Time to read Sat-Nav instructions perhaps

In order to make sense of things going on around me and further afield I like to get as much information as possible, the only snag being that I could do with a 30 hour day! We really are into the information age aren't we but the problem can be taking on board the things that really matter.

Listening to the midday phone-in on Radio Devon yesterday the topic of sat-navs misdirecting lorry drivers down country lanes was raised. I don't have a sat-nav, have never knowingly seen one and was never really aware of all their capabilities. A listener phoned in to say that he has a sat-nav for his car, his sat-nav isn't a top of the range model but it can be set to suit different types of road users. Now this is fascinating stuff because it would appear that if only the instruction book was read a lorry driver's sat-nav could be set up so that his juggernaut is not sent along a car only type of route.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if the manual that comes with a sat-nav is 60 pages long, today's technology is so sophisticated that we tend to just utilise a minute part of it. This laptop on which I'm presently typing is I know capable of doing much more than I am using it for and sometime I want to explore some of these possibilities.

My guess is that the sat-nav when purchased has a default setting for normal car usage. Surely if it can be reset for a heavy commercial then that should be done. I would very much like to see lorry drivers and/or haulage companies fined heavily if they are using the technology incorrectly. If property owners or the highway authorities are having to pick up the bill when a lorry causes avoidable damage in a road where it shouldn't be well that is totally unacceptable in my book.

Another listener had phoned to say that a sat-nav could be set so that it followed motorways, 'A' roads and 'B' roads only, perhaps that is the same option that I had previously referred to. I have to say that I'm very disappointed but not surprised that journalists haven't investigated this subject properly. The media take a very superficial view on these sort of things which is very poor indeed in my opinion.

More Sat-Nav woes - this time at Forder

It was only just over a week ago that I was blogging about lorries getting stuck in rural lanes as their drivers blindly followed their sat-navs, the particular instance I focused on being a Czech juggernaut that found itself wedged near Ivybridge.

Fast forward a few days and we find another example this time just across the Tamar in Cornwall. Within a stones throw of the hustle and bustle of Saltash, well just down the hill that leads west from St Stephens Church to be more precise, lies the tiny village of Forder. It is one of those little gems that doesn't make the headlines in the media ... until last week anyway. What happened was a very large lorry found itself descending a hill into Forder, lost its brakes and only came to stop by the driver throwing it into reverse gear. The haulage company blamed the sat-nav for the driver taking an unsuitable road. The vehicle was stuck there till the next day when a massive crane turned up. The extraction process included the temporary removal of overhead cables and the lifting of the lorry's trailer section over the roofs of the nearby houses! Not surprisingly the TV cameras turned up to record "the rescue".

I am totally bemused by the fact that the haulage industry don't seem to be able to get to grips with these sat-nav headaches. Mishaps like this must cost them dear - I believe someone from the recovery team said they are getting this sort of incident every week now.

Perhaps it needs a pedestrian to be seriously injured or worse by one of these lorries to get this sat-nav problem sorted.

Sat-Nav cause more problems

I seem to be stuck on the subject of traffic and driving at the moment but this entry is regarding a problem I've wanted to comment on for some time, and the front page story in today's Western Morning News has brought it to the fore.

According to the WMN story a Czech driver working for a Czech haulage company was on his way to Lee Moor to collect some TVs. His satellite navigation system (or sat-nav as they seem to be known as) directed him down a country lane between the A379 Plymouth to Kingsbridge road and the A38 Devon Expressway. This wasn't any old lorry but an articulated 40 tonne monster. Obviously the next part of the story is that the lorry got firmly wedged between the hedge banks. Fortunately for the non English speaking driver the mishap occurred close to a house where the housewife, a Croatian, was able to sufficiently understand his native tongue to communicate with him. Inexplicably it took three days before someone could pull the lorry out. Meantime the driver spent his nights in his vehicle (it had a bed) and the Croatian lady and her husband kept him fed and watered by inviting him in for meals.

These stories of HGVs getting stuck come up now and again ... and again and again and again. They just illustrate a situation that is ludicrous in that the drivers do not understand the fallibility of their sat-navs. By and large they seem to work for the ordinary car but obviously often not for bigger stuff. Isn't this the problem with this clever technology, before it came in one was reliant on a degree of common sense, an ability to read a map and a general feel of where you were. But now it's a case of "who needs common sense - we have the technology, stupid".

Some months ago a sign, the first in this country, was erected at Exton in Hampshire, telling drivers not to rely on their sat-navs after problems there. And only the other day there was the unveiling of a sign in the Vale of Glamorgan again advising that the technology should not be used. This latter one was of a pictorial design to avoid the linguistic problem that foreign drivers could encounter. OK such signage could be used in instances where there are regular problems but could hardly be erected in the hundreds of locations where lorries could come to grief.

I haven't seen the men from the ministry or the sat-nav manufacturers being very active in dealing with this issue, they need to be a darn sight more proactive. As usual you can expect the local authorities whose highway budgets are always being squeezed to do any repairs after such incidents occur. A lot of these minor roads are a few inches of blacktop on not very much and are certainly not designed for trans-continental juggernauts.

These large lorries should confine themselves to 'A' roads and 'B' roads except the very last part of the journey if the depot or whatever is off such roads. Looking at the 1:50,000 OS maps for my two counties it can be seen that you are never any great distance from 'A' and 'B' roads so there is no reason at all why big lorries can't stick to them. Drivers getting stuck in narrow lanes should be prosecuted for careless driving. Obviously I am excluding smaller lorries, the ones collecting farm milk for instance and the tankers that deliver calor gas for properties not on the mains.

Please note that I'm not decrying the use of technology, it's just a case of recognising that on occasion its usefulness is limited. Instead of us becoming techno-junkies 24/7 we should realise that commonsense still has a part to play.