Sign of the times 23 Feb 2007

A new breed of road sign has arrived on our streets: The "Ignore Sat Nav" sign. The Mail on Sunday reports that the concerned inhabitants of Exton in Hampshire have begun erecting these warnings to prevent sat-nav-reliant drivers from getting stuck in the village's narrow lanes. Exton resident, Brian Thorpe-Tracey says:

"About two years ago we noticed a real increase in drivers using the lane. Vehicles are getting stuck and having to reverse back up, damaging the wall and fence. There's even a piece of metal embedded 12ft up in a tree which looks like it's come off a lorry. When I've asked drivers why they are using the lane they say they are just following satnav."

O'Reilly Radar points out that there's a real opportunity for expanding the role of crowdsourcing in this domain:

"This is a case where user contributed data would save the day. That isn't always the case. Sites like Open Street Map rely almost entirely on auto-submitted user-contributions are well-equipped to handle this. Teleatlas and NAVTEQ have begun accepting corrections via their Map Insight and Map Reporter (respectively). This is a good step on both of their parts, but the data still needs to be manually processed before it will be fixed (even then it can be months before partners receive it)".