The General Public Are Stupid

[Si Hunt]

A woman who drove on to a railway line after being told to by her satellite navigation system made "a bad but honest mistake," police have said.

The woman who drove on to the track near Eastbourne, blocking the Hastings to Brighton lines, has not been named.

She was waiting at a level crossing at Norman's Bay, Sussex, in January, when the device told her to turn left.

Pc Christine Holyoake, from British Transport Police, said the 52-year-old Surrey driver would not be charged.

If it told you to drive off a cliff.... oh. You would.

Si.

[Ralph]

If it told you to drive off a cliff.... oh. You would.

Si.

I think if it had been Thelma or Louise then yes

[Wayne]

How thick can you get!

[Dirk Gently]

Some people deserve all they get...oh wait, she got off!

[Dave Tudor]

Bloody hell!

Y'know, I've yet to travel in a car with somebody using one of these sat-nav things, and I don't use one myself (obviously), but they seem to be all the rage now, with more and more people using them. But are they necessarily a good thing? Is it going to get the stage where drivers are relying on them totally, and not using their common sense, as this stupid woman appears to have done. Christ, the roads are bad enough as they are without drivers becoming more careless.

What's wrong with using a good old-fashioned map and planning your journey before hand...?

[Larry]

only confirms my belief that there are many people who should never be allowed any where near a car this stupid fool could of not only got her self killed but any passangers on a train that might of hit her.i

[Jason Thompson]

It's just another symptom of the 'it's not my fault' blame and compensation culture we seem to be living in. Anyone who can't tell the difference between a road and a railway, and turns onto the latter in her car just because some fancy gizmo told her to, should not be behind the wheel of a car.

[Stephen Morgan]

Viv bought a Sat Nav for the car last year, I siad not to buy it as it would be a waste of money, and I would never use it, I haven't, she has.
When we were away last summer, and no doubt Zel and Andrew can bear this out as we probably told them the story, Viv set the Sat Nav to get us to the Green Lanes shopping centre in Barnstable, even though I protested I knew the way. We set off alright, until the thing told me to make a right turn and I took a left turn because I knew the way was shorter, Viv insisted, as did the Sat Nav, on making a U turn to go the way it wanted me to, so I relented and made a U turn. After a few miles of silence from Viv and the machine, it again told me to make a right turn at a junction when the signpost at said juntion clearly pointed to Barnstable four miles to the left. After about 100 yards it told me to make a left turn down some narrow country lanes, where, after about half a mile of hoping I didn't meet a tractor coming the other way, it brought us to a crossroads and promptly announced "you have reached your destination".
After a few quizzical looks at Viv and wondering why the thing had stopped us in the middle of country lanes, I asked Viv to check the machine. Nothing wrong she told me, we are where I set it for. Wondering whether or not Barnstable had moved over night I checked it myself only to find that it had indeed set us down where we intended to be, in green lanes near Barnstable. Had Viv set the machine properly it probably would have got us to the correct location of Green Lanes Shopping Centre right in the middle of Barnstable.

[Si Hunt]

My friend was telling me last night that they are trying to make his 85 year old Grandad give up driving. He refuses to go faster than second gear, complaining that "people are always in too much of a hurry these days."

Si.

[SiHart]

This morning on my way to work there was a car coming down one of the cycle lanes. Since this is seperated from the main road by a pavement, you'd think they'd have noticed.

Much of the general public are very silly. You only have to work with them to realise that. For intsance, we once had someone come into the library and ask if if we'd got any books. I told her we'd got two novels but one of them was out. She didn't see the funny side of that, but I was chuckling for minutes.

Si xx

[Pip Madeley]

A woman once came in to the library asking to reserve every episode of Love Thy Neighbour on DVD... we didn't have any (it's not the sort of comedy the Council would want to stock!), so I told her if she went to HMV she'd definitely be able to get hold of it there.

She said "this is disgraceful, I pay my council tax" etc etc - I replied "well, you can fill in one of our stock suggestion forms if you'd like", so she did. After she left, I looked at what she'd written down... it said "We want Love Thy Neighbour DVDs please, I love it when he calls the black man nig-nog"...

... needless to say, I threw it in the bin.

Stupid woman.

[Captain Tancredi]

Hope you made sure she wasn't the local BNP candidate before you did that...it'd make their day to have that on the front of the paper.

[Larry]

My friend was telling me last night that they are trying to make his 85 year old Grandad give up driving. He refuses to go faster than second gear, complaining that "people are always in too much of a hurry these days."

Si.

and how many times have you read in a paper about some one driving the wrong way up a motor way and it nearly always turns out to be some 70 to 80 year old..

[Pip Madeley]

Hope you made sure she wasn't the local BNP candidate before you did that...it'd make their day to have that on the front of the paper.

She's not come back as far as I know...

[Trudi G]

Anyone who can't tell the difference between a road and a railway, and turns onto the latter in her car just because some fancy gizmo told her to, should not be behind the wheel of a car.

I totally agree - maybe they should make people take a test to see how stupid they are as well as a driving test!

[Larry]

the more you think about it the more unbelievable it sounds even if the Sat-Nav told her to turn left she could see it was a railway track and even some one with only half a brain cell would realisie it was wrong and would have driven straight on.

[Dave Lewis]

A woman once came in to the library asking to reserve every episode of Love Thy Neighbour on DVD... we didn't have any (it's not the sort of comedy the Council would want to stock!), so I told her if she went to HMV she'd definitely be able to get hold of it there.

She said "this is disgraceful, I pay my council tax" etc etc - I replied "well, you can fill in one of our stock suggestion forms if you'd like", so she did. After she left, I looked at what she'd written down... it said "We want Love Thy Neighbour DVDs please, I love it when he calls the black man nig-nog"...

... needless to say, I threw it in the bin.

Stupid woman.

Perhaps if you'd run after her, smashed her over the head with a copy of some boring book, rolled her around in the gutter, pissed in her face, and then said that she'd experienced something akin to what Love Thy Neighbour was about... if she wasn't some silly uneducated white bitch living in a different world to the rest of the vaguely educated parts of the planet... then perhaps she wouldn't come back looking for it again.

Or perhaps you could send her down here... I know far too many sad arsed racist scum down here.

[Ian Lethbridge-Stewart]

If it told you to drive off a cliff.... oh. You would.

Si.

Actually, I remember reading sometime ago that due to a software error or satalite black spot (or some other technical sounding reason) a Sat Nav did actualy instruct drivers to continue along a road for 2 or 3 miles - it turned out that if you followed the instructions exactly that you would indeed drive off a cliff!!!
Thankfully I don't think anybody actually managed to drive off - but it's a scary thought.

Oksana bought me a Sat-Nav for Christmas 2005 - it's come in handy for getting me to gigs in the middle of nowhere - but I never use it unless I really have to.
Although I end up where I want to go - my Sat-Nav has very strange ideas about the quickest way to get there - it also has a strange knack of directing me to London (even when I don't need to go there).
It's also totally useless in London - it directs me the wong way down one way streets and through no entry signs etc. One time it directed me round and round Trafalgar Square

[Larry]

this story all be it a bit late appeared in todays Daily Mail, and the police said that it was dark at the time when this woman drove onto the track though personaly IMO s no excuse.

[WhiteCrow]

If it told you to drive off a cliff.... oh. You would.

Si.

Lemming SatNav ...

[Jason Thompson]

this story all be it a bit late appeared in todays Daily Mail, and the police said that it was dark at the time when this woman drove onto the track though personaly IMO s no excuse.

That's what those big lights on the front of her car are for....

[Stuart Wallis]

Which reminds me; a couple of years ago I was walking back from the library in the dark and was crossing the road at a crossroads. I and a three-year-old wrer nearly knocked over by a woman who we couldn't hear for the traffic on the high road, and couldn't see because she'd not put her lights on and the side road was double-parked. The boy's dad yelled out "you nearly knocked someone over! Why aren't your lights on?"

She replied "They are!" and then switched them on. People, eh?

[Larry]

. The boy's dad yelled out "you nearly knocked someone over! Why aren't your lights on?"

She replied "They are!" and then switched them on. People, eh?

makes you really want to punch them when they do that..

[WhiteCrow]

makes you really want to punch them when they do that..

Only punch?

I can get a real foul temper with such people at times.

[Allllie]

My friend was telling me last night that they are trying to make his 85 year old Grandad give up driving. He refuses to go faster than second gear, complaining that "people are always in too much of a hurry these days."

Si.

My grandad used to do that as well, except it used to sound like the engine was going to explode as he didn't drive any slower