GPS Run Amok on Small English Country Roads

I love my GPS but recognize that it could lead me astray.  Fortunately, I don't live in a town with roads built for horse and cart.

From the Christian Science Monitor:

With its winding country lanes and parish church, its 18th-century cottages and sleepy allotments, life is gentle and agreeable in this bucolic southeast English village. Or at least it was until the truck drivers started coming through.

First there was the Slovenian driver en route to Wales with a load of paper who took an improbable detour and ended up wedging his juggernaut into a tiny lane. It was stuck for two days.

Then there were the 10-wheelers that wheezed their way up Butcher's Lane, a thin ribbon of a road constructed with horse and cart in mind. One made a mess of the roof on Ena Wickens's cottage, which lies flush to the lane. No sooner had it been repaired than another truck snorted its way up the roadway and crumpled part of the roof again.

"It's such a worry," says Ms. Wickens as she putters around the garden behind her cozy Jane Austen cottage. "This last time, it was lucky I was in, otherwise he would just have driven off. There is a sign at the bottom of the road saying 'Unsuitable for large vehicles,' but still they come."

Why, exactly, do they come? The answer is to be found in the satellite navigation kits (satnav for short) that are handy for getting motorists from one location to another, but not always judicious in selecting the most appropriate routes.

(snip)

Satellite navigation has turned one country lane in Wales into a virtual gill net, ensnaring almost every truck that comes along: One could only be set free recently by knocking down a stone wall. And last month, a Lithuanian lorry driver was stuck for four days after his vehicle became wedged on a rural roadway more suitable for sheep than trucks.