There are a number of questions that the lorry driver Necdet Bakimci might have asked as he attempted to deliver a load of luxury cars from Turkey to Gibraltar. Why is the weather getting colder? Why am I taking a ferry across this cold, grey sea? Why aren't the road signs in Spanish and why is everyone driving on the wrong side of the road?

Mr Bakimici's epic journey ended on Monday when he grounded his lorry on a humpback bridge on a small lane a few miles short of Gibraltar Point, Lincolnshire.

Thankfully, apart from having to endure an unwanted visit to Skegness, Mr Bakimici is unharmed, though the same cannot be said for many other drivers fooled into following the instructions given by their sat-navs. According to figures extrapolated from a survey by insurance company Direct Line, 300,000 accidents have been caused by sat-navs and one in ten drivers admits to having been given dangerous instructions by the devices - though not all motorists, thankfully, followed them quite as slavishly as the woman driver who last year steered her £96,000 Mercedes into the unfortunately named River Sence in Leicestershire.

Presumably, as a non sat-nav-user I can now look forward to a discount on my car insurance, as I shouldn't be subsidising the idiots who do take any notice of the devices. Why are motorists allowed to use sat-navs at all? Drivers are now forbidden from using handheld mobiles while driving, so what is the justification for allowing them to fiddle around with a gizmo on the dashboard that not only distracts them from the road but tells them to drive the wrong way down one-way streets and to take a sharp turn left while they are barrelling along at 70mph?

Many bridges and ancient buildings have been damaged by lorries whose drivers followed instructions to take inappropriate routes. Villagers in Dorset have even been driven to change the name of their lane, so fed up were they of being blocked in by agonised lorry drivers.

Yet far from banning sat-navs, the Government has in one case made them compulsory: under legislation enacting the EU Welfare of Animals during Transport Directive, any lorry taking farm animals on more than 12-hour journeys must be equipped with a satellite navigation system. Why? I suspect it is an underhand attempt to create a market for Europe's Galileo sat-nav system, which has already cost taxpayers €1.6 billion, in a misguided attempt to emulate the US GPS system.

Personally, if I had to drive a lorry-load of sheep to Antwerp I would sooner ask my passengers for directions than rely on a sat-nav. The idiotic devices should be banned, and anyone caught using one sent on a compulsory course in mapreading.

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