"Tim Streater" wrote in message
.. .

There's a report in the Times today about a Yank tourist in Iceland who
mis-typed the street-name where his hotel was, after picking up the
hire car at the airport. 600 miles later, he gets to the place with the
road that he actually typed.

There was a report the other year of a chauffeur-driven limousine taking
some people to a football match at Stamford Bridge stadium (Fulham's ground
in London). The chauffeur's satnav directed him to the town of Stamford
Bridge in East Yorkshire. And the mistake was only discovered when he got
there and the football ground was nowhere in sight.

I'm not sure whose fault it was. Should the chauffeur have noticed when he
programmed the satnav that it was a long way from where he was starting, and
queried with his passengers? Should the passengers have thought "We've been
on the A1 for a couple of hours - this doesn't seem right" and got him to
turn round?

When I use a satnav I always first glance at the intended route and the
distance/time estimates to make sure that they are sensible. Whether it's a
long journey or a fairly local one, I would never just set off; I'm often
curious about "I wonder which way it will take me". In other words, I have a
fairly good idea of how to get to my destination but use the satnav to make
sure I don't miss any crucial junctions and as a time/distance countdown
("ah, I'm now 10 miles / 10 minutes from journey's end").