Yesterday I made my way back to work after a weeks holiday (Why do you always need a holiday to recover from a holiday?) As i traveled along my normal commute, I was hit with a closed road & diversion. Now this is a bit of a tricky one as the closed road is a rather busy road that carries a vast amount of traffic up towards the north wales coast, and has trucks going back and too almost constantly. The diversion sent this heavy traffic through Bwlchgwyn (A place advertising itself as the highest village in Wales) For those of you who have never been there I should point out this is a small village situated on the top of a mountain, and has very small roads between its buildings. Roads that due to parked vehicles are just wide enough for a single car to drive along as long as there is no oncoming traffic. “Great!” says I, “This is going to annoy me for weeks!“.
That was yesterday.
Today the commute included a load of new road signs. in bright yellow, and placed every 50 yards for the length of the diversion. These signs said simply “DO NOT TRUST YOUR SATNAV”
Now, I agree this is a valid warning from the government, You cant have people going about listening to voices coming out of small box’s, how does the box know which way to go? it hasn’t even got any eyes? And what if the person in the box is rubbish at reading maps? you could end up anywhere, Or it could try and tell you to turn and drive off the end of a cliff. But I digress.
Now for the signs to have been placed, and the amount placed you know there had to be at least several incidents. All I can think off is several trucks (since cars are more maneuverable) must have been sent on the diversion, and their satnav’s must have realised they were on a different road, and tried to recalculate them back to the road they should be on. The only way to do this would be to direct them down streets not designed for traffic bigger than horses, or the small horse drawn cart. roads where you have no chance to turn around on. Now these roads will go to the road the trafic should be traveling along, but wait! that roads closed so can not be used.
So I figure there was a lot of trucks or larger vehicles trapped on small side roads yesterday, causing chaos, and possible emergency rescue. I would love to have watched it on my Spy Satellite, If only I had one.
