
Robert Jones, 43 certainly had a run of bad luck as he was driving through the town of Todmorden, England. Jones, whose BMW was nearly out of gas, was looking for a petrol station and relied on his TomTom navigation system to help him find one. Unfortunately, the satnav instead led him down a dirt road. Despite some pretty apparent clues that he might be going the wrong way, Jones continued to rely on his trusty satnav, until he drove his BMW to the brink of a 100-foot cliff and got stuck on a fence.
A dead cell phone and nothing for miles, Jones had to walk to the nearest village to get help. It took nine hours, a tractor, three quad bikes and $1,650 to free Jones's teetering vehicle from the cliff and the fence. But the buck didn't stop there, the Calderdale Magistrates Court in Halifax, England fined Jones $1,470 for allowing himself to get in that predicament in the first place and not exercising his smarts.
Surprisingly Jones is still pro-TomTom even after dishing out all that dough! "I still use mine. It's the only time the system ever let me down," he said.
Hmmm...talk about the blind leading the blind....
--Car Chick
Check out my article on GPS systems: 'GPS satellite system is in trouble and so are YOU'