Revealing the Potential Failures of Infrastructures

In the train of thoughts on Revealing the Presence of Infrastructure, their limits and their potential failures, Vale of Glamorgan (Wales) deployed visual signs warning drivers not to believe their GPS navigation system. After once peaceful villages were reduced to bedlam when heavy-goods lorries got stuck in tiny country lanes.

“The proliferation of satellite navigation aids used in heavy goods vehicles, and their over-reliance, especially by overseas drivers, has presented itself as a problem within the Vale of Glamorgan,” a spokesman for the council’s highways department said.

Source: BoingBoing

Relation to my thesis: observing of the current integration of sensor technologies in our everyday life in order to question the design of future ubiquitous systems. No surprise this new types of signs appear in the UK. It seems that the anglo-saxon “mind the gap” culture has a tendency to reveal limits and inconveniences of infrastructures while others take less pride in preventing ungraceful degradation. Is the same inclination noticeable with the ubicomp of the present? This type of sign seem to indicate so.