There was a time when, if you wanted to drive to a place you had never been to before, you had two choices. Either drive in the general direction and ask for directions whenever the opportunity arose, or use a map. An actual fold-out road map. The kind that never went back to the way it was before you unfolded it.

You had to rely on road signs, route numbers, landmarks and all sorts of witchery to get from A to B. The front seat passenger was usually the navigator, and their map-reading skills were vital. It didn’t always work out, though and many a road map ended up in several pieces when tempers flared.

That all ended when GPS came along. The Global Positioning System seemed like the answer to all our prayers. Just type in your destination and up pops the route map and off you go. The nice lady in the machine would even tell you when to turn so it was stress-free.

Where would we be without it?

Well, to be honest, we might not always end up where we are supposed to be. It turns out our GPS friend isn’t infallible. An article in The Times in Britain pointed out that the problem with the Global Positioning System is that it can be interfered with by a number of things that can generate a false reading.

It described one incident where a GPS blocker was accidentally left on a car ferry. The type used by some........

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