Satnav blunder sends Belgian granny 1,450km to Croatia A Belgian granny who planned an 80km car trip to Brussels ended up in Croatia, after ill-advisedly obeying her satnav's orders to traverse Europe. Sabine Moreau, 67, intended to drive from her home in Solre-sur-Sambre to pick up a chum from the Belgian capital's Brussel-Noord station, but was instead directed eastwards on a …
Or, back in the 1980's , the noun was spelt that way in New South Wales. Took me by surprise when I saw it spelt with an s on a very official looking poster in a post office in Woden ACT *. Something like "license photographs taken here" . So I did a bit of checking, and damn me if that's not how they spelt the noun in NSW.
Strange that a country that (allegedly) doesn't have regional accents, does have regional spellings.
* which in a way is in NSW, but also isn't **
** ACT being competely surounded by NSW
How did she manage to get through so many countries without being asked to present her passport? Surely she'd have been stopped at the border checkpoint?
Don't get me wrong, I believe it can happen since I was told that one of my grandpa's friends recently ended up in a village some 200 kilometers from home because his degrading mental health and craving for food at 3 in the morning got him there when all he intended to do was drive a few blocks away to a 24-hour food court, but surely the lady would've gotten in trouble for crossing the checkpoint without a passport?
Not sure about the Croatian border, but within Schengen you can go anywhere without being stopped. Even so, a border stop at the Croatian border is likely to be a quick glance at an ID card (passport not necessary) and being waved through.
IMHO, if you're 'distracted' enough to drive 1500km and not notice, hints like a border crossing are not going to be substantial enough.
Never driven through Europe?
Usually the first you know about crossing a border is when your phone connects to a new network and sends you a text saying "Welcome to Germany". You literally just cross a sign at 70mph a few seconds later (like "Welcome to Middlesex" - style) without stopping and you're in another country. Not even a line, or a person, or a checkpoint, or a different tarmac on the road or anything. And there are sometimes even houses and streets that straddle the border.
I did a 2500 mile round trip around Europe and wasn't hindered once (France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Czech Republic, Austria, and then looping back to the UK through France and Germany again - the only reason I didn't get further is that my companions had to fly back to Australia and we lingered too long in Germany, but we were planning Italy, Poland, Spain, etc.).
Some countries do have physical borders that they don't even enforce (e.g. France or Switzerland -> Italy means going through tunnels or over mountains, and they stop you and charge you money for a badge that allows motorway usage, but don't actually check your details at all).
Europe is pretty open. It's incredibly easy to not even know what country you are in if you're not on the main motorways. And it's so easy to cross countries that you can literally do it accidentally, and with nobody knowing. Which can be a bit of pain when UK customs stop you on the ferry back and ask you to prove where you've been and start searching the car thinking that a lone male on a "road trip" to Europe with friends that can't be contacted is probably not being honest. Hell, I didn't even have a receipt for any of the hostels we stayed in because I was doing the driving and petrol because I had the car and a UK credit card, and the others paid for the accommodation because they had cash in Euros. I swear that the 5 customs officers who took an hour to search my car at 3am in the freezing cold were certain I had something even after they removed all my door panels and took my boot apart. But through Europe? Nothing until you hit Calais or the former Russian states, basically.
Europe is pretty open, until you get to the extremes.
"Europe is pretty open, until you get to the extremes."
Agree entirely, go to the mainland a lot, 4 times driving last year. Only stops are Dover on the way out - motorhomes are a magnet for security checks, Swiss border but usually only to buy a motorway pass, and British entry check at Calais.
"It's incredibly easy to not even know what country you are in if you're not on the main motorways"
True, but this wasn't simply straying over the border... she must have crossed all the width of Germany, and the breadth of Austria, and surely she must have stopped for petrol at least once.
> Which can be a bit of pain when UK customs stop you
Whenever I go abroad customs control on the other end is always efficiently staffed with smiling professionals who seem to genuinely welcome you to their country.
When I get back home again it's a thirty minute queue in front of two grotty booths containing guys with faces like smacked arses. "Welcome to England," they seem to be saying, "keep off the fucking grass."
I think she actually stopped for fuel twice and was driving for 2 days, this made me laugh so much, her intended journey was 38 miles, surely after about an hour (more likely earlier) you'd be wondering why you haven't reached your destination, let alone the language changes, sleeping through the night, filling up with petrol, she didn't even think she wasn't in Belgium until she got to Croatia,
Asolutely hilarious story.
There are three official languages in Belgium - Dutch,French and German. They tend to put up roadsigns, and talk, in only the language of each particular region. Seeing roadsigns changing from French to German wouldn't be unusual in itself and a bit of Slovak and Croatian is no more strange to a French speaker than Dutch.
However, the Belgians are the butt of numerous jokes in France along the lines of Irish jokes in England. I suspect a slow news night in the AFP offices.
Not sure what I have to believe here. If you start in Brussels on the E40 and just never change lanes and keep on driving, you end up in Zagreb. But a satnav system directing you there? Then what destination did she enter? BTW, can anyone explain how you can traverse the Alps, without noticing that is not your typical Belgian landscape?
If you're that "distracted" you shouldn't be anywhere near a steering wheel.
Over that distance, she would have had to fill up her car with more fuel once at the very least.
It's beyond the realm of what I consider to be plain "stupid" to leave the house for a quick drive to the nearest station, then drive an incredibly long way, have to fill up, keep going, and somehow "not notice".
I would take the licence away immediately.
Simply typing in the wrong name of the city will not cause this in general. On all satnavs I have used (Garmin and (long ago) ViaMichelin) you must first actively select another country. Otherwise Frenchmen would be sent to Paris, Texas by accident. ;-)
Remaining question: Is there a Brussels, Croatia? ;-)
OK, ok, I'm going to admit that on one such 12-hour trip I took to Zurich, at Strasbourg I used to hop across to the German side of the border and cruise the E35 all the way down. One time it was extremely late and dark and I took the North exit, got to Mannheim before I realised I was headed in the wrong direction.
Not quite a 2 day excursion, more like an extra 4 hours but still... now go ahead and laugh/downvote!
Ah yes. My first cross Europe drive to Wilhelmshaven , via Fance, Belgium, Nederlands, Germany etc also included an unexpected diversion, we managed to get passed Namur before the penny (dutch Guilders then) dropped, in my defence 1/ wife was map reading [dang thats an oxymoron] 2/ was pre sat nav days.
coat cos that's mine with the Tommy Testicle in.
Driving tests weren't made compulsory until some point in the 1970s so it's quite likely the driver never had to take one to get her licence.
Also, having been to Brussel Noord I can understand her desire to avoid it. Not at bad as Brussel Zuid but certainly up there on the list of "100 Train Stations You Don't Want to Visit"!
...that on your average 80km road trip the road signs usually do NOT magically change languages, and it also does not require you to have "a few naps in the car", she should be put to sleep for good, for fear of managing to get behind the wheel of a car again in the future and doing some damage to an innocent bystander.
"...that on your average 80km road trip the road signs usually do NOT magically change languages, "
Although, in Belgium, signs do switch between three languages and is damned confusing if you are not used to it. Having said that, German is not a language used on Belgium road signs and she might have realised something was amiss when cars started whizzing past her at speeds well above 200KmH. Then there's the snow - one might have thought she would have noticed that the world had turned white when approaching the Alps.
I once went on a course just outside London, 2 young women (early 20's) who had driven down together from Liverpool didnt arrive until the next morning. When we asked why they admitted they had got to the M6 and turned left (North) instead of right (South)and ended up in scotland before they realised, they then had to retrace and get to the course adding an extra 300 miles to their journey.
Also, to those who say she needs her licence taken away, it's entirely possible she thought the French/Dutch equivalent of "Fuck it, I'm 67 and I want to see Croatia before I'm gone: Full Speed Ahead!" and made up the satnav excuse for the benefit of the friend she failed to meet.
I've done 100-200 mile drives (admittedly before petrol was so expensive) on nothing more than boredom and a whim, so I can understand where it would come from.
You can be distracted, fair enough. Then, when things become out of the ordinary (give her a benefit of doubt, a few hours later) - you start paying attention, looking at the road signs, looking at the sights, paying (some) attention to them funny hills outside, perhaps a peculiar number of "foreign" registration plates overtaking, waving at you... you can't be f... distracted for two days, sorry.
So I expect it to be another cooked up marketing story, similar to those reported at face value by the media, on a toddler who bought a bulldozer off an auction site. There were others.
So what are they selling now? No satnav, that would be too obvious :)
Or in any neighboring country. Jokes are always told about your neighbors and the same jokes will travel around the world, only the subject will vary. Sometimes they fall asleep to wake up again centuries later. My advice is to tell no jokes at all, and especially never abroad, unless you want to take the risk of loosing your face. This subject is awfully rewarding and very funny if you enjoy "lost faces" and have the ability laugh at your self. Oh dear have to stop here.
Given her age and the, frankly unbelievable, size of the blunder, my guess is that she suffered a mild stroke or something similar. It's not unknown for victims of strokes to remain in a trance-like state for hours or days after the stroke. Funny/sad how our -mine included- first impulse is to label her as 'stupid'.
First, this could be a warning sign of short-term memory loss. Something like this, though less drastic, happened to the father of an acquaintance. He was nearer 80 than 70, but had some decent years left in him.
Second, there could have been a romantic getaway that she considered to be none of the son's business.
That's what we call that state where a dementia sufferer does or says something clearly wrong, but is completely unaware of reality. In the early stages, this doesn't happen all the time, it can be episodic, and the person can appear quite normal the rest of the time.
I've seen my mum in a similar confused state, unaware of where she is or why she is doing something. She often denies that there is anything wrong, and had become quite adept at masking her confusion on a day to day basis, before we had her assessed to figure out what was going on (I have to say it was pretty obvious to me that she has dementia).
I hope the lady gets a diagnosis and support for her condition, it is a terrible disease which gradually robs a person of not just their memory, but ultimately their own sense of self.
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