subject: Pensioner Incident Show How Sat Navs Can Be Useful [print this page] An 83-year-old pensioner could have really used even a cheap sat nav when she spent a phenomenal nineteen hours driving around the south of England hoping to make it to Bristol for a relative's wedding. After leaving her home in Ashford, Kent, Maureen Darvall got a little bit confused while on the M25. She took a wrong turning and ended up outside of Bournemouth.
The police pulled her over on her way back towards London on the M3 after she was found driving the wrong way up a motorway. When asked why she did not turn around, she simply replied "because I did not want to go that way".
Ms Darvall was told that she will have to take her driving test again if she wants to get behind the wheel of a car once more, but only after serving a fifteen month ban as punishment for her wayward and potentially hazardous driving.She reassured the court, however, that she will be selling her car and investing the funds into a mobility scooter to get around.
Nonetheless, Britains motorists are set to benefit from a world first in sat nav technology which will improve awareness of level crossings and encourage safer driving. A free downloadable application which alerts drivers with a cheery train whistle sound that they are approaching a level crossing has been developed by Network Rail. It is hoped the new technology will encourage safer motoring and reduce the number of incidents which cause damage, disruption and a number of deaths each year, and will be available with the very best sat navs on the market.
They also want to develop the application so the sat nav would alter your route to avoid a level crossing where the barriers are down for a significant period of time, if the alternative was quicker.
Network Rail director of operational services Dyan Crowther said:
Motorists that jump the lights or smash into barriers as they try and beat them coming down can cause great disruption and cost to the network, so were always looking at new ways to reduce the risk of incidents at level crossings.
Sat nav technology has proved to be a great help to motorists in alerting them to whats ahead on the road, so developing an app around level crossings seemed a smart idea and we hope it will be a useful aid to motorists as the roads and the railway get even busier.
