Ford, River Winster and (out of picture) one pissed-off 4x4 driver...

Do kids still play ‘pin the tail on the donkey’ at parties? It seems unlikely. I remember being blindfolded and spun around till I was dizzy, then being pointed vaguely in the direction of the donkey. It was about as much fun as it sounds. The adult equivalent is trying to negotiate a complicated road system and getting hopelessly lost.

We carry in our minds a map of our surroundings - whether that’s a detailed topography, a compass bearing or just a big empty space with tumbleweed and a sign reading ‘Here be dragons’. As we drive along a road, we upgrade our mental map - automatically, continually, unconsciously - by the position of the sun and our innate awareness of the direction we’re travelling. With every junction and bend in the road we make the appropriate adjustments to our position on the map, so at any one moment we have a pretty good idea whether we’re headed North, South, East or West. Even if we can’t pin the tail on the donkey, we have a pretty good idea whether the donkey’s over here or over there.

This kind of mental map has served us well over the centuries, helping us to find our way across unfamiliar terrain. However, all it takes is a complex motorway junction, or a convoluted one-way system in town, to wipe our map clean of useful information. We’re confused, we quickly ‘lose our bearings’’. We have to rely on signs and instructions; without them we’re lost.

One option, of course, is to wind a window down and ask a local for directions. We’re likely to get a long list of instructions (we’ll remember the first two, typically, and forget the rest). The stranger’s directions always end the same way, with a smile and “you can’t miss it”. Well, yes, we can miss it; we’re lost. A few minutes later we’re asking someone else, and then someone else after that: a procedure complicated by a few other factors. The person we ask may know the way, but is wilfully misdirecting us (I’ve done it; I'm not proud of the fact. I’m sure other people do it too). The person we ask may be lost too, but doesn’t want to admit it. The person we ask may be a helpful soul, who would rather offer misleading directions than no directions at all. One way and another, by trial and error, we’ll find our way to where we want to be: frazzled, fed up and half an hour late for our scheduled meeting.

Instead of cultivating our innate sense of direction, we’re delegating our route-finding responsibilities to a small computer screen perched on the dashboard. Having tapped a postcode into the SatNav we can generally get to our destination without mishap. A disembodied voice (male or female, depending on choice) tells us where to go. Not a long list of “lefts” and “rights” and “straight aheads” to forget (and no cheery “you can’t miss it” either), but just calm, measured instructions, delivered in plenty of time for you to indicate and change lanes. We arrive at our meeting ten minutes early: cool, calm and collected. For the return journey we simply tap in our own postcode and follow the instructions. The technology is amazing. What can possibly go wrong?

Well, maybe we’re relying too much on a gadget which, though rich in data, is short on common sense. Lorry drivers drive down narrow country lanes, quite unsuitable for HGVs, for no better reason that their SatNav told them to. Terrified motorists find themselves teetering on clifftops and river-banks, or stranded in a ford that the SatNav neglected to say was a bit too deep, following heavy rain. One man tried to drive along railways tracks, having followed SatNav instructions rather too literally as he was negotiating a level crossing. A cab driver taking Earl Spencer’s daughter to a Chelsea match ended up 146 miles off course, in the picturesque North Yorkshire village of Stamford Bridge. Add your own choice of (possibly apocryphal) SatNav horror stories here...

A SatNav encourages us to dispense with our mental map altogether. We don’t bother to reorientate our internal compass. Even if we still have a road-map in the car, we’ve probably forgotten how to use it. So when the temperamental technology of a SatNav lets us down, we’re not merely lost... we’re completely lost, geographically and psychologically lost, to an extent we couldn’t have imagined before our capricious computers started telling us where to go.