what are these people like? Would they drive into a river if a ferry wasn't there yet?
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bradford/7962212.stm
Edited by Pugugly on 24/03/2009 at 19:06
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Some people must think a satnav is a substitute for common sense.
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Idiot! I'm driving to Frankfurt next week and will be taking TomTom but I'll also be taking my European road atlas because I'm not reliant on the technology.
I don't expect it to be 100%
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I am sure this man will say, in his defence: "Sir/Madam, common sense is a rare gift of God. I have only a technical education."
(With thanks to Dr. Carl Compton)
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Pity the car stopped.
He could have won a Darwin Award and also saved passing on his stupid genes to his offspring.
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I saw some pictures of a full sized fully loaded artic truck stuck down a rutted rough farm track under overgrown trees and up to the axles in mud, truly you'd have thought twice at taking a proper off roader down there, how he got the thing into the turning in the first place baffled me.
Sure enough another spellbound worshipper of the demon satnav, but the truck driver, and i use the term loosely did have the decency to wear a hoody, give the rest of us a chance to avoid him.
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>>>>>> saw some pictures of a full sized fully loaded artic truck stuck down a rutted rough farm track under overgrown trees and up to the axles in mud, truly you'd have thought twice at taking a proper off roader down there, how he got the thing into the turning in the first place baffled me.
Sure enough another spellbound worshipper of the demon satnav, but the truck driver, and i use the term loosely did have the decency to wear a hoody, give the rest of us a chance to avoid him. <<<<<<
GB, Shame on you!
I have wanted to reply to this all week but I haven't had a decent signal on my Dongle and the lappy has been like wading through treacle.
I have struggled to get past at least three car transporters this week. All parked on the kerbside ( in the way) driving off their cargo onto a tarmac forecourt and each time I have thought about what it's like in the real world of lorry driving.
Many of our deliveries ( and Harleymans too, I bet) are to farms and at least one of them at Ipplepen, is at least 4 miles down a road that says 'Road unsutable for HGV's' at the top of it.
We face the chagrin of the locals but we have to go there, since the local council granted them planning permission to run a business from that location.
One thing I have learned is that other peoples predicaments are rarely as simple as they seem to be by the casual observer.
Pat
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Pat, you misunderstand me, the hoody wasn't going anywhere near a farm and this road (in name only) would have given a Landrover owner second thoughts, i believe the term green lane would have applied, no proper truck driver would have entertained it.
Ah glad we've caused our usual chaos this week, hope i was one of the three unloading transporters, and was this done particularly irresponsibly during peak hours at a road junction, if so respect!
(result as well, you've wanted to tell me off and haven't been able to log on...teehee)
We've always been public enemy number one, but then we didn't site the garages or decide to stick a supermarket directly opposite the dealership as at several of my regular drops.
As for parking partly on the kerb, that gets a British standard kitemark, upsetting pedestrians and motorists.....can be amusing watching the pandemonium whilst drinking several cups of coffee with a certain delightful receptionist.
..;)......
PS for those with a sense of humour bypass, as usual most of the above is tongue in cheek.
On a more serious note, because of indiscriminate parking on industrial estate access roads/retail parks we often almost block the road to deliver cars having no choice.
Because of poor ground clearance and even worse approach angles and those parked cars we are usually unable to reverse onto the few dealers premises that would allow us anyway.
This estate parking is getting quite ridiculous in places, it matters not a jot to me personally i'll manage, but often the people causing the problems are the ones who shout obscenities and get themselves in a right old state when they are inconvenienced by their own thoughtlessness. Now that really is funny.
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The thing is, y'see, that folks are just too inclined to believe what a bit of gear says just because it's a bit of gear.
There was an interesting debate last week-end about a Lotus Elise clocked at 173 mph, but that was just the info from a bit of gear.
The lesson is: don't let your senses and your common sense be taken in by a reading from a bit of gear.
Evenin' all.
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There are all sorts of fancy high tech marine navigation systems but they are aids to navigation and are always backed up by a good old chart and pencil. Pity most car drivers dont realise that they are only an aid to finding your way around.
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There are all sorts of fancy high tech marine navigation systems but they are aids to navigation and are always backed up by a good old chart and pencil,
Isn't "Radar Assisted Collision" a well known and not uncommon source of marine accidents?
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Isn't "Radar Assisted Collision" a well known and not uncommon source of marine accidents?
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Yes, didnt look out of the window. Bit like satnav common sense failure.
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Pity the car stopped.
You don't really mean that - he would have landed on a railway line. There could have been collateral damage.
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A BMW driver - just about sums it up !
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A BMW driver - just about sums it up !
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Fog lights hard wired to ignition switch, brain hard wired to satnav. :-)
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what are these people like? Would they drive into a river if a ferry wasn't there yet?
I might hope so - but for the passengers.
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happens on a weekly basis here some roads are only just big enough to drive a car down without getting stuck on the bends, lorry drivers go shooting up there following the old electronic wife (only thing that reads a map worse then a tom tom is a women) only to need towing out when the road swallows them up
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It's the usual story - they set their sat-nav to 'shortest' in a false bid for economy, whereas in about 99 % of cases 'quickest' is best.
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Fully laden car transporter drove down my Dad's residential street trying to get the rat run to the VW dealers round the corner. Driver following his sat-nav. He totally ignored the signs that said "no through road". Got to the bollards and got stuck. Couldn't turn as the street was barely wide enough to turn a car. He had to call in the police to get residents to move their cars while he reversed 500 meters back up the road to the junction. Delayed his journey by two hours!
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Why was the driver going round a LH bend on right lock-or was it just because he is a BMW driver?Glad to see he is being prosecuted for lack of care and attention.
Edited by jc2 on 25/03/2009 at 08:04
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I am glad he is being prosecuted, he should have his license taken off him and have to retake an extended version of the test.
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I'm not a user of them, so take this as you like..
If you check out the picture on the BBC link above the sat-nav unit is clearly obstructing a large part of the drivers view, do the Police consider this a safe siting of said unit?
Another car could easily be hidden in that blind spot, let alone a child, bike or motorcycle.
A lot of the users I see have these things 'suckered' onto the windscreen in a position that if a stone chip (of certain size) occured it would fail the MOT, so why not these things?
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A lot of the users I see have these things 'suckered' onto the windscreen in a position that if a stone chip (of certain size) occured it would fail the MOT so why not these things?
Yes, I also don't understand why people do that. I took our company pool car (Opel Astra) out the other day. It had the TomTom cradle fixed smack in the middle of the windscreen. I moved it to the lower corner of the windscreen which both removed the blind spot and moved the device closer to my hand so that I could reach it more easily.
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Oilyman
If you look at the photo at the bottom right hand side you'll see 'PA' that means it's a Press Associaton picture and will therefore be a 'stock' photo.
The Beeb would have just paid a small fee for using this as even they won't be bothered to go to this pratts car and take an actual photo.
Cheers
Benjurs
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Besides it looks like a photo of the inside of a Focus Mk I. Definately not a BMW.
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A lot of the users I see have these things 'suckered' onto the windscreen in a position that if a stone chip (of certain size) occured it would fail the MOT so why not these things?
you are quite correct...they are not supposed to be placed (and neither is anything else) where a windscreen wiper would sweep
trouble is it's lower down the order of offences and there's minimal traffic based policing going on nowadays, so it gets overlooked
you can easily buy after market brackets, that fit by far the majority of cars' air vents... that's what i've done.. so they sit just below the windscreen area
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I am not trying to defend this man, but maybe his friends told him they lived at the top of a steep, unmade drive? The article does not say how far away from the road he was.
It could just be another case of incomplete reporting.
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From local paper:
Colin Exley, director of Stoneywood Motors based in Halifax, said: "He just drove and drove ? he had gone three-quarters of a mile across the moor.
"You can't imagine he would go so far but he did ? from a dirt track, to a green field to a footpath to a moor.
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That's better. Thanks daveyjp.
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It also states it took over 6 hours to rescue the car!
I don't trust satnav in rural areas, it's too keen to get you off main roads to cut corners and reduce the distance travelled.
Only last weekend I noticed mine said turn right off the main road onto a single track road. I could see from the map the main road swung left then right, the route cut off the corner. By turning right I would merely have shaved a few metres off the total trip and ended back on the main road after the right hand bend. Ignoring the instruction was the sensible option.
Better road classification is required by satnav mapping systems so only A and B roads are used for the majority of the journey.
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You have to be careful if you tell a sat nav to use the shortest route - it will choose some roads you would not normally use.
In this case it was again the driver to blame and not sat nav. The sat nav may have got it wrong but it was the driver who followed advice that was wrong - would he have really driven off the edge?
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8 out of 10 lemmings would use satnav if it were available in their area.
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Was it a special 4x4 satnav that can be set to 'Ignore Roads'?
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Here's a picture of the recovery.
tinyurl.com/c3lb7w (link to Sky News website)
Apparently it was a fence that stopped him going over the edge! He was still following the sat nav.
Edited by rtj70 on 25/03/2009 at 12:49
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There's some better pictures here - tinyurl.com/coqudd
I would guess that judging by the first picture, the car slipped down the last part of the path into the fence.
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I just found the ones on the Daily Mail site which you link to - beaten to it. No wonder the police are talking about careless driving!
But you can see if he'd turned to the left a bit the path continued - I wonder why he stopped? :-)
Edited by rtj70 on 25/03/2009 at 12:55
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"The driver was a 43-year-old man from Doncaster. He has been summonsed to court for driving without due care and attention."
You can be done for that for driving across a field?
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"driving without due care and attention."
Hard to argue with that. He was driving and clearly not paying attention!
He was quoted thus: "It [the satnav] kept insisting the path was a road, even as it was getting narrower and steeper. I just trusted it."
Anyone who believes a gadget in preference to their own eyes needs a bit of counselling, IMHO. And a re-test.
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"A West Yorkshire Police spokesman said: "Officers received a call at 11.18am on Sunday March 22 reporting that a BMW was hanging off the edge of a cliff off Bacup Road."
So was this going on in the car?
SatNav: "Backup Road, Backup Road"
BMW "Driver" "I know it's ***** Bacup Road"
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I'm not sticking up for the guy, who is clearly a complete imbecile, but isn't a tendency to trust instrumentation rather than visual indicators a common cause of plane crashes too?
I think there is an element of human nature at work.
Cheers
DP
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Another example of driver just not paying attention to surroundings.
tinyurl.com/dz2pry
On a separate note, why would the bus need to be towed away?
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why would the bus need to be towed away?
Even though there was most likely no damage to the running gear, I guess it's a H&S issue. The bus driver was probably in no fit state to ascertain whether any more bits might fall off the damaged bus into traffic as he drove it back, much less in a fit state to actually drive it back! The picture shows that the recovery driver has secured the loose bus body before starting to move it.
Also he might have been flagged down by passengers waiting at a bus stop (thread link: possibly by the aforementioned BMW driver, if he still refuses to recognise the obvious problem right in front of him).
Edited by Dave_TD {P} on 29/03/2009 at 05:03
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The variability of human nature is endlessly fascinating. For example, the geezer in this story is obviously pretty insouciant about where he is willing to drive. Like me, he expects his car to cope with surfaces other than smooth metalled road when necessary.
On the other hand I see people every day slowing to a ridiculous tortoise-like crawl to negotiate speed bumps and rough urban surfaces, and I remember a recent thread here in which people were whingeing about having to drive through a bit of mud on the road, and faffing about who to complain to about it. Still makes me snort with derision, that.
Rich, strange and frequently irritating or downright moronic, human nature.
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Don't know if I'll get away with this, other than to say that the sat nav has never fallen off while conducting this experiment but the speed hump thing is so subjective. My Signum crashes over them reluctantly at anything over 10 mph, the Mondeo sort of floats over them at up to 20mph but the Ka can take them at pretty much any speed and sometimes lands before the next one........
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Learnt one thing about French cars - they make speed bump surfing fun. Even a bog standard 306 was far superior to any German megawagen over the bumps leading to the local nick !
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Learnt one thing about French cars - they make speed bump surfing fun.
I agree!
There are speed ramps near us which the Scenic would glide over at 30 mph. The Golf thumps angrily over them at half that speed.
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True enough DP, when my Espace was going it just sort of ignored speed bumps.
It didn't have a sat nav fitted ( for the sake of some thread dignity )
;-)
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I have a confession _ I mindlessly followed TT the other week whilst hunting Howarth (Bronte stuff) and ended up on a blocked off lane - which was very clearly signed thus.
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I followed TomTom to get to a beach on the Lleyn Peninsula at the weekend. It was single track with few passing points. I was not on it for long. Said road was national speed limit and therefore I was allowed to do 60mph! It was frightening!*
* Obviously I didn't go much above 20mph - you couldn't.
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Porth Neigwl (Hell's Mouth) ?
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It was near Nefyn/Morfa Nefyn. I was surprised at the national speed limit sign. Thankfully no cliffs. Although I did park at the top of one in a National Trust car park (Porth Dinllaen).
Edited by rtj70 on 25/03/2009 at 16:43
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May head off there before the Easter rush - thanks for the idea.
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It's a bit odd that they used a quad bike to recover the BMW. If the Beemer managed to get that far then a Land Rover would have got in, recovered the car and got out again.
A quad just seems a bit light for the job.
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Ah, Porth Dinllaen. Brunel had a mad idea to build a big railway harbour there to compete with Holyhead ...
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Nice pub down there if memory serves me right - (it is sunny there in my mind as I type) and not far from Duffy's home ?
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Nice pub indeed. Good stopping point when driving (motoring link). Had a good stop and a coffee before continuing our travels (Walking).
It was sunny when we were there. And windy.
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I'm not sticking up for the guy who is clearly a complete imbecile but isn't a tendency to trust instrumentation rather than visual indicators a common cause of plane crashes too?
It has happened but I'm not sure I'd say it was common. More common is a tendency for pilots who haven't been trained on trusting instrumentation to get into a situations (weather-related) where they have to try because they are running out of visual indicators.
It's not really a direct analogy for driving though since, for pilots who have been sufficiently trained, flying solely on instrumentation in the complete absence of visual indicators is a perfectly normal thing to do.
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