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Residents' warning signs 'working a treat' at tackling the sat nav confusion
IT is little more than a narrow dirt track leading to a farmhouse, a handful of homesteads, and a dead end.
But for two years the residents of Eastwood, Todmorden, have been disturbed on a near daily basis by articulated lorries and large vans heading up their road – all trying to get to Burnley.
An apparent sat nav glitch means drivers are instructed to turn off Halifax Road and up Duke Street and Eastwood Lane to the little community.
Now, fed up with walls and roads being destroyed and confused drivers continuously asking for directions, the local residents' association has taken action – and put up a series of signs warning drivers their sat navs are wrong.
The signs point to the correct way to Burnley along the A646 Halifax Road, towards Todmorden.
Ian Cooper, a Calderdale councillor who lives in Eastwood, said: "It got very bad for a while, there was hardly a day without a lorry, van or a car coming up.
"You could tell straight away they were lost and just blindly following the sat nav.
"But since the signs were put up it's really helped. They make drivers question how reliable their sat nav is."
On the mapping website Google Earth, Duke Street is shown linking to Eastwood Lane.
But the road is then shown becoming Eastwood Road and eventually connecting with Kebs Road – a connection that simply never happens.
Another resident said: "We put the signs up a couple of months ago and they've worked a treat." He said a local farmer had paid for them.
This week residents in Sowerby Bridge found a 44-ton lorry wedged on their doorsteps after a Bulgarian driver followed his sat nav along a narrow winding road.
The truck was stuck for more than three hours at the junction of Hollins Mill Lane and Timmey Lane.
And in March the Courier reported how Robert Jones crashed his BMW into a fence on the edge of a 100ft drop after he was led astray by his sat nav. Mr Jones plunged down a near-vertical footpath on the hills above Todmorden because the device said it was a road.
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Saturday 11 February 2012
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