As a non-driver myself (believe me, I’m working on it!), I suppose I can’t fully appreciate their worth, but from the passenger seat I still have a pretty good idea of when we’re lost! Ok, he’s my issue with them - you have a vague idea of where you’re heading and you can still see all the directions, but your Sat Nav is encouraging you to take a different route. You ignore it thinking, I don’t need you yet, I know this is the road we need to take. It then goes into some sort of frenzy of recalculation, barking orders at you like a gadget possessed! Is that really going to aid concentration whilst driving? With the urgent ‘turn left, turn left’ ringing in your ears you soon find you’re completely lost and feel like throwing the blasted thing out of the window.

The other option is to trust your Sat Nav completely, ignoring your better judgement and driving past the road you really think you ought to have gone down. Sure, you’re bound to arrive at your destination, but who knows how long it will take or what sort of crazy ‘long cut’ you’ll have taken! Maybe I’m just cynical, but my opinion of Satellite Navigation systems is based on two experiences - the first is my mother in law driving me to the hospital for an emergency scan when I was pregnant. We missed the exit at the roundabout, so knew we simply had to turn around but the sat nav lost it’s mind causing the mother-in-law to nearly lose hers!

The second experience was our holiday in Cornwall with friends travelling in a large comfortable people carrier with the kids, but being led a right merry dance by the sat nav until my friend urged her husband to ‘please turn it off before I throw it out of the window’! So, am I being a little harsh on the poor sat nav? Do you think maybe I need to do a little more product research? Answers on a postcard….