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Well, not directly. But nearly! Apparently 2000 bridges are hit each year as a result of lorry drivers following the now incredibly popular ‘Sat Nav’ devices. Network Rail (a British company that owns the rail infrastructure) says that as a result, this costs the Rail Industry £10m per year, with 5000 hrs delays! Wow!
I guess somewhere here there is an implication that drivers are not paying full attention to their surroundings, but rather to the directions barked out by the often disembodied voice that inhabits the Sat Nav unit (I think the voice in mine is called ‘Tom’, and he seems constantly irritated…!).
It’s not just bridges that suffer though – traffic is channeled in to small villages, narrow or one-way roads, and in some extreme cases, the wrong country! I would love to read the story/driver explanation around that last scenario – wonder if it was anything like:
Driver: cuz we were like driving, and like, the cars were like, on the wrong side of the road
Passenger: Yeah, and like, the cars were flashing their lights and s**t, and I was like, no way!
Driver: So I was like, man, I gotta stop this s**t. So we asked this dude by the roadside, and he was like, you know, speaking like, in another like, language
Passenger: Totally! He was like soooo foreign! And we were like, whooooah!
Of course this is just a guess – and it’s quite likely if it were the conversation, that their poor navigation was due to other reasons than paying attention to the Sat Nav…. 
[Via: BBC News]
About The Author
Ben Robinson
Ben is a 10+ year veteran of the Mobile industry – starting his career when SMS was a still a relatively new concept for most people (!), he has now consulted on everything from bleeding-edge Mobile content, to the next-gen accessories you might view it on. As a result he has a broad and deep knowledge in numerous areas of Mobile – from network operators to device vendors, to infrastructure and middleware vendors (not to mention content delivery) – and has worked for companies in all of these areas! He is based in the UK, a hotbed of activity for mobile, and recently became a father for the second time – as oppose to in his younger years when he was happy spend time tweaking all manner of mobile devices to 'nth' degree, he now looks for services and hardware that provide the most efficient, compact, and reliable improvements to his already manic life! It’s his opinion that Mobile solutions should be there to help to make your life better – if a particular solution (be it service or device) isn’t doing this, he believes you need to ask the very important question of why you continue to use it... His focus at IntoMobile is mainly on Mobile content, services, and infrastructure, particularly as regards the UK market – and with the occasional look at devices. Additionally, using his extensive experience in the industry, he will provide commentary on the industry at large, with regular (and hopefully thought-provoking) articles.
