Misled service personnel are not the only victims of confusing satellite navigation systems.

• A juggernaut ended up in a tight spot yesterday after the driver, apparently following sat-nav directions, tried to turn into a narrow bend. The centre of Totnes, in Devon, was closed for about half-an-hour after the lorry blocked the main road through town and had to back-out slowly. A satellite navigation error is believed to have sent the lorry up the street before the driver realised he was never going to make the turn.

Police closed the street while the lorry was backed down the entire length of the road to the mini-roundabout at the end.

• A sat-nav ruined an American tourist's hopes of seeing the Queen at Windsor Castle in June by taking her 121 miles away to a pub of the same name.

The woman, in her early 30s, drove from Bath to the Windsor Castle pub in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, instead of the royal building in Berkshire.

• An articulated lorry got stuck twice in one day near the same Snowdonia village after the driver used his sat-nav to find a route from Bangor to Aberystwyth.

It first blocked the road in January this year as the driver failed to cross a bridge at Beddgelert, Gwynedd.

Later, police escorted him away when he got stuck on his way back.

• A car was left teetering on a cliff edge in March, 2009 after the driver followed sat-nav directions down a Pennine footpath.

Robert Jones continued to follow the instructions when they told him the narrow, steep path he was driving on in Todmorden, West Yorkshire, was a road.

Mr Jones, from Doncaster, South Yorkshire, only stopped when his BMW hit a fence above Gauxholme railway bridge.