What a funny sight! I was astonished to see the Mercedes-Benz taxi parked at a rakish angle along a dirt road in North-West England’s Saddleworth Moor after its driver had been led off by his satnav.
Was he a fool to continue following his GPS system into territory that was only accessible by tank or lunar exploration vehicles?
I was not even able to contain my disgust when I realized that I already knew the right answer.
After his satnav took him away, a Mercedes-Benz taxi got stuck at Saddleworth Moor’s middle track.
Oh dear. Oh dear.
Furthermore, I think I know how the poor taxi driver got into this embarrassing situation.
This is because I, too, am the proud owner of a Mercedes-Benz — not a top-of-the-range limousine, mind you, but one of those nifty little A-class hatchbacks, which recently overtook rivals to become one of the bestselling cars in the UK.
Flaw
It was a gift for me as my retirement present, three years ago. I still love it.
The car is loved by Mrs U. However, she doesn’t agree with the design of the seats and chassis. Its amazingly advanced electronics also make her less impressed.
It can automatically park, turn the steering wheel and apply the brakes, and change from first to reverse without the need for driver intervention. This is something Mrs U never tried.
There’s also an emergency SOS button, which will put you in immediate touch with a helpful Mercedes staffer — as my wife found to her dismay the other day, when our grandson pressed it as she was struggling to fit his car seat (like so many other four-year-olds, that boy just can’t see a button without pushing it).
The most striking aspect of my Merc is, perhaps, its beautiful and clear built-in satnav. It’s the most brilliant system I have ever seen to tell the driver where to go from the roundabout and how to avoid congestion.
After that eight hour drive from New York to despair, I purchased a small satnav which I keep on my beloved Merc’s dashboard.
One problem: If Mrs U is anything, it will be a very serious defect in a satellite navigation system. The satnav doesn’t have any idea how to best get to A from B.
In fact, my theory is that the programmers of the Mercedes-Benz navigation system used maps from the UK, which were smuggled to Germany during World War II by the Special Operations Executive, in order to mislead a possible Nazi invasion force.
Despite the fact that I have lost track of how many times I have been miles away from where I wanted to go over the last three years, it is true. It was because I didn’t follow the Merc satnav’s extremely clear instructions.
I believed in this hopeless system, despite not understanding the reasons. It was pointless spending money on a well-designed car that had a built-in navigation system if you don’t pay attention to the direction it gives.
Last October was the first time I learned to trust my family again. I took Olivia and her family along to York to attend Olivia’s beautiful wedding.
As most people know, you can get to York from London by taking the M1.
This is the same route that I used to take in my old days when there was no other guide than the AA road map. That was also what Mrs U recommended I take as we headed out to the wedding.
The Agonizing
However, the Merc’s satnav was more creative and directed me towards A-roads or Broads with short cuts through housing estates.
She said “Ignore that,” My wife was not convinced. I assured her that it must have a valid reason for me to choose the more conventional route. According to me, the motorway was jammed full of traffic. This information was taken into account by the Merc’s software.
The story is too long to continue. After an 8-hour trip on the scenic route and taking in nearly every city centre, road work, and town, we finally arrived in York. . . Only to find out that guests had driven the distance from London without a Mercedes Satnav System and had done it in half the time.
She didn’t utter a single word of reproach during the eight hour ordeal. “I TOLD YOU SO,” she said quietly.
I can only say enough to suggest that, even if the poor taxi-driver relied on the built-in satnav of his Merc, it didn’t surprise me at all that he ended up on a dirt track in Saddleworth Moor.
You know that the fastest way from London and York to each other is by taking the M1, which you can do in a matter of minutes. This is the same route I took in my youth, back when I didn’t have any other guides than the AA Road Atlas.
This brings me to the great mystery of why a powerful car manufacturer like Mercedes-Benz is incapable of creating a navigation system that can navigate from A to B, despite producing some of the best technology available.
Mercedes could simply purchase a license to the software, even if it has no in-house experts.
(Before other car companies start feeling smug, I should point out that a friend with a Mitsubishi tells me that his built-in satnav is rubbish, too — not a patch, he says, on apps such as Google, TomTom or Waze.)
Dangerous
Maybe there’s more to the story. It’s a mystery to me why so many of us, like myself, trust computers so much when we should know that they are completely unworthy.
The news this week that 8 offenders in Scotland were sentenced to life imprisonment was something I am thinking about. It happened because of an error on the computer’s part which miscalculated 1 317 risk assessments.
Is it not strange that 8 potentially dangerous people were released on the whim of an electronic device, or was this just a curious coincidence?
Consider the scandalous prosecution by the Post Office of over 700 sub-postmasters/postmistresses. Many of their lives were destroyed when they were wrongly accused of fraud, theft or false accounting.
Why did the Post Office not stop to say, “Hang on!”? The fact that these people, once trusted by the public, suddenly became available for grabs is beyond common sense. Is there something wrong with the new software?
Yet, I was still astonished that my car’s navigation system trusted me after leading me wrong so many times.
That is a question I don’t know the answer to. My only conclusion is that I learned my lesson. Since that grim eight-hour drive to York, I’ve acquired a portable satnav, which I prop on the dashboard of my beloved Merc — and I advise that taxi driver to do the same.
Although it may be less beautiful and clear than the one that came with your car, the information is still very useful. It seems to be able to see the way, as Mrs U will tell you with her infuriating, I-told_you-so smile.