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December 5, 2006 10:25 AM PST

Ambulance blindly follows GPS across the U.K.

by Candace Lombardi

Members of a London ambulance crew on their way to a town on the outskirts of London ended up in Manchester after blindly following their GPS navigation system, the BBC News reports.

The London Ambulance employees were transferring a patient from a hospital in Ilford, a town northeast of London, to Brentwood, a town 12 miles farther.

Instead, the crew ended up driving all the way to Manchester, a city about 200 miles north of London. The crew members essentially drove across almost the entire country of England before realizing that they had driven too far, according to the report.

A spokesman for London Ambulance said that the navigation database led them off course, and that they did not realize their mistake until reaching the outskirts of Manchester.

The patient being transferred was unharmed, according to the report.

In a software-driven world, it's easy to forget about the nuts and bolts. Whether it's cars, robots, personal gadgetry or industrial machines, Candace Lombardi examines the moving parts that keep our world rotating. A journalist who divides her time between the United States and the United Kingdom, Lombardi has written about technology for the sites of The New York Times, CNET, USA Today, MSN, ZDNet, Silicon.com, and GameSpot. E-mail her at candacelombardi@gmail.com. She is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not a current employee of CNET.
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