☛ Gary Larson (1993). The Far Side Gallery 4, Kansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing, p. 12.

Forget about cellphones causing car accidents. In the UK, a ridiculous 300,000 car crashes have been caused by GPS. And, according to a survey commissioned by Brit tabloid rag The Mirror, 1.5 million drivers have swerved through traffic when following their sat-nav’s instructions a little too closely. (“GPS Causes 300,000 Brits to Crash”, by Charlie Sorrel, WIRED, July 22, 2008)

DAMIAN Pinkus is married but he likes to tell people he has a girlfriend he keeps in his car. Her name is Muriel – “which is a pompous name, don’t you think?” – and she speaks in a cool, soothing voice. He says he loves her but what he means is that without Muriel he’d be lost. Muriel is Mr Pinkus’s portable navigation device, or global positioning system, which, depending on your point of view, is either the best thing to happen to Australian marriages since the invention of the shed, or the worst thing to happen to our roads since planners decided that trucks and holidaymakers could co-exist on a two-lane Pacific Highway. (“GPS drivers lose their minds to life on dash” by Caroline Overington, The Australian, August 2, 2008 [paywall])