18 The satnav lady

Most of the people who find their way to Whimsey are lost. Having wound the window down, and asked a local for directions, they get a long list of left and right turns (of which they’ll remember just the first two) and the names of half a dozen pubs. The directions always end the same way, with a smile and “you can’t miss it”. Well, yes, they can miss it; they’re lost.

A few minutes later they’re asking someone else, and then someone else after that: a procedure complicated by a few other factors. The person they ask may know the way, but is wilfully misdirecting them (we’ve all done it, haven’t we?). The person they ask may be lost too, but doesn’t want to admit it. The person they ask may be a helpful soul, who would rather offer misleading directions than no directions at all.

We carry with us a mental map which, over the centuries, has helped us to find our way across unfamiliar terrain. However, all it takes is a complex motorway junction, or a convoluted one-way system, to wipe our mental map clean of useful information. Having lost our bearings, we have to rely on signs and instructions.

Everyone seems to have a satnav these days. Instead of cultivating our innate sense of direction, we’re delegating the route-finding responsibilities to a small computer screen perched on the dashboard. Once we’ve tapped a postcode into it, a lady’s voice, serene and measured, offers simple, unambiguous, turn-by-turn directions well in advance of every manoeuvre. We arrive at our destination ahead of time: cool, calm and collected. For the return journey we simply enter our own postcode and follow the instructions. The technology is amazing. What can possibly go wrong?

Problems arise when drivers develop a blind, unquestioning faith in their onboard gadgets (never a good idea with inanimate objects), and leave their dog-eared maps at home. Though rich in data, the satnav is notoriously short on common sense. Lorry drivers drive down narrow country lanes, quite unsuitable for HGVs, for no better reason that their satnav told them to. Terrified motorists find themselves teetering on clifftops and river-banks, or stranded in a ford that the satnav lady neglected to say was a bit too deep, after heavy rain. One man is reported to have driven along railways tracks, having followed satnav instructions rather too literally as he was negotiating a level crossing. Add your own choice of (possibly apocryphal) satnav horror stories here...

Yes, the gadget that works so well in the leafy suburbs may be a liability in the flatlands. A-roads turn into B-roads, soon degenerating, without warning, into narrow, single-track lanes, with grass growing down the middle, which come to a dead end at a farmyard full of clapped out tractors and savage dogs, chained up and howling at the moon. 

With her fallibility so cruelly exposed, the satnav lady can become defensive - the voice no longer reassuring but now tinged with mockery and sarcasm. Once drivers start bickering with a disembodied voice emanating from the dashboard, they’ve lost the plot. When this temperamental technology lets them down, they’re not merely lost... they’re completely lost, geographically and psychologically, to an extent they couldn’t have imagined before their capricious computers started telling them where to go.

Viewed through the windscreen of a four-door family saloon, the landscape that once looked inviting now seems oppresive and unwelcoming. What a relief it is, after driving around East Yorkshire for hours, to see a comprehensible road sign: the M62, the motorway services (Kanye West at junction 36) and home.