Understanding Satellite Navigation Systems

As clever as technology maybe these days, we're still a long way off taking the human element out of the decision making process when it comes to satellite navigation. We often see in the press stories suggesting sat nav systems instructed the driver to drive into a river, get stuck in a field or turn onto a railway track.

Local Knowledge versus High Technology

While these examples, the final one in particular, will be down to human error, satellite navigation is still based on the same traditional maps you get in your Road Atlas. So there may well be a perfectly legitimate right of way for a car to get from A - B, but if the locals stopped using it many years ago it can start to resemble more of a dirt track than a road way. Sat Nav doesn't necessarily know this. Similarly in many countryside locations a small brook or tributary may well run across a road, but a bit of human common sense is required to see that a flash flood may mean it's not always passable. There are many similar examples of locations around the British Isles of places only accessible at low tide, such as Holy Island, otherwise known as Lindisfarne off the Northumberland Coast.

Shortest Route or Fastest Journey?

You should also understand that while you or I will generally choose a route which is a combination of the shortest route and fastest journey time, a sat nav can only calculate a route based on one or the other of those criteria. We may also choose not to drive down a particular road because we know there is a nasty blind right hand turn at the end, which your satellite navigation system does not understand.

In short, put your faith in a system and with a little common sense it will get you there, just maybe not quite the fastest or shortest route, or indeed the one you would have chosen if you know where you're going.