The Daily Mail ran a hilarious piece at the end of last year about a man who ended up perched on a cliff edge because he was following his sat nav. In the dead of night he had heeded sat nav instructions which told him to turn off the road and onto a field. The thin path soon turned to a precipice and before long his car was teetering above a house.
He was charged with dangerous driving and the explanation " I was just following my sat nav" did not wash with the court.
Used properly sat navs are wonderful devices and they can take a lot of stress out of a journey. If you are driving on your own it is almost impossible to read a map without having to pull over regularly. If you or the passenger are not good with maps anyway, then a sat nav is still a better option.
The problem with sat navs is that the road conditions change quicker than their information database. I used to work as a journalist for a local newspaper and many of our stories (yes it was an exciting part of the world) revolved around lorries getting lost and stuck or damaging public property in the process.
Sat navs are often used by long distance lorry drivers as many of them come from abroad and don’t even speak the local language. They are not to know that the road which the sat nav advises them to take has now become a one-way or blocked off at one end. The biggest problem is that sat navs don't show low lying bridges. Knowing that they can't turn around, many lorries will attempt to get under the bridge anyway but then get stuck.
Many out-of-the-way rural destinations are difficult to access by sat nav. Even testers of the new CoPilot system, a sat nav which is compatible with your iPhone, were not impressed. The huge map download took quite a long time, and half an hour longer to copy the software to an iPhone.
Then comes the real catch. If you are finding that it is not working in a foreign country, it's because you have to set your cell phone to roam. This is extremely expensive as people who have tried to use the internet abroad would testify. You could have an unpleasant bill waiting for you upon your return.
So it seems that in spite of all the incredible new technology we have access to, the good old map will always have a place in the world.