Sat-Nav Disasters

Still following instructions after being warned by a road sign “warning of dangers to heavy vehicles”, the lorry driver got stuck between two walls down a muddy country lane. He decided to trust the navigation aid and continue, however the truck became jammed and he was unable to reverse up the sloping lane because of the wet and muddy conditions. He had to spend the night in his cab, and only manage to escape the following day after the rain washed away the mud.

At least five motorists have been left confused when they have ended up on the cobbled staircase in the Aragonese town of Teruel in eastern Spain. The motorists were simply following sat-nav instructions which led them down the pedestrian only street. In the most recent incident a crane had to rescue an estate car from the narrow side street. Teruel city council has said it will be erecting bollards at the top of the staircase to deter motorists from attempting to drive down. 

Sorry about the dreadful image, photo's are few and far between...

A Belgian woman left her home in Solre-sur Sambre to pick up her friend from a train station in Brussels. After taking a disastrous wrong turn she ended up 900 miles away in Zagreb Croatia. Police believe she had crossed through France, Germany, Austria and Slovenia before ending up in Croatia. After refuelling her car several times and seeing multiple-language traffic signs , she never questioned her sat-nav until two days later when she realised she was no longer in Belgium. By this stage her worried son had reported her missing to police so officers searched her house and were about to launch a full scale manhunt when she phoned home to say she was in Zagreb.

A sat-nav hiccup left a coach load of school pupils nearly 80 miles from home in the middle of the night after an already long trip back from Paris. The coach driver entered the wrong place in his sat-nav, misspelling their destination by just one letter taking the children to the north Wales coast instead of the west coast in Gwynedd. The children and teachers did arrive home safely, later than expected but somewhat sleepy.

A Doncaster man was left just yards from the edge of a 100ft cliff in West Yorkshire after his sat-nav insisted a Pennine path was a road. He says the device kept insisting the path was a road even as it was getting narrower and steeper, he said he just trusted it and didn’t expect to be taken nearly over a cliff.

Even a minor mistake following your sat-nav can come at a price, the female owner of a £96k Mercedes-Benz found when she followed directions from her device: which told her to drive into the River Sence in Leicestershire (ironic name!). The swollen river pulled the car around 200m down stream. Luckily the driver escaped without any injuries, but no surprise the car was ruined.

This lorry driver drove down a narrow lane and became wedged between two buildings when he was looking for a parking space. Innocently following his sat-nav he turned the 13 tonne HGV down an alley, he was actually meant to be delivering soft drinks to a convenience store in the small town of Bruton, Somerset. He then found the truck completely wedged between an estate agents and a house, he was unable to reverse back out so was forced to sleep in his truck. The following day a rescue team arrived and spent six hours towing the lorry back up the slope, minor damage was caused to the properties, although they had already suffered some damage on the way down.

The truck driver blamed his electronic way finder for directing him into a very unsuitable path for an HGV, which turned out to be a cul-de-sac. The trucker accelerated in a panic and ended up ploughing over a mini roundabout, at which time a car got trapped underneath his lorry, and also destroyed a further five vehicles.