Satellite Navigation Responsible for Increased Accidents?

In several cases of spectacular accidents reported last year in Europe, satellite navigation system can be fairly blamed to be the cause.

In October a 53-year-old German, obeying his satnav’s command “Turn right now!” jerked the wheel over and crashed into a roadside toilet hut 30 metres before the crossing he was meant to take, causing damage to the tune of about R18 000.

A few weeks earlier, an 80-year-old motorist also followed his satnav instead of common sense and ignored a “closed for construction” sign on a Hamburg motorway. He hit a pile of sand at high speed but was not hurt.

In southern England a 29-year-old woman survived unscathed after misreading her satnav and driving the wrong way on a motorway near Portsmouth at nearly 120km per hour, according to a local newspaper.

When stopped after 22km of dodging oncoming traffic, she told police she had only followed the satnav orders.

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It can be disastrous in emergencies. An ambulance driver with a faulty satnav drove more than 600km while transferring a patient from one hospital in Ilford east of London to another in Brentwood - 13km away. He was near Manchester, northern England, before realising his error.

While it is easy to blame the humans behind the wheels for the errors, I think the problem is real and deep-rooted. In modern world people are conditioned from birth to obey authorities. It is this unquestioned respect of authorities which causes McDonalds manager to strip search female employees without questioning. When an authoritarian voice commands you to turn left or right on the road it becomes almost second nature to obey them without questioning, even suspending your better judgement. This is also the reason why phishing scams succeed so often.

Effectively when we find that someone of something has proven to us before that it has knowledge of a system, we tend to trust them, especially when we do not have very strong confidence in our own capability in that field. While it is likely to affect senior citizens more, I have seen such blind trust even in younger people too. On a different context, I have seen youngsters having unwavering faith in whatever comes up with Google search!
Most people using satellite navigation system do not know or realize that the satnav systems operate on maps which are sometimes outdated and inaccurate.