Britain is 'dangerously' reliant on satnav systems, according to experts

This country is so dangerously dependent on sat-nav systems that a system failure could cause loss of life, experts have said this week.

Whether down to deliberate interference or accidental damage, we're now so reliant on sat-nav for road, rail and shipping - amongst other things - that a failure could cause major incidents, according to a report by the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Chairman of the academy's GNSS working group, Dr Martyn Thomas, points out that GPS is used in such a range of applications, that a failure of GPS in general could have a disasterous knock-on effect. "The use of GPS signals is now commonplace in data networks, financial systems, shipping and air transport systems, agriculture, railways and emergency services," writes Dr Thomas. "Safety of life applications are becoming more common. One consequence is that a surprising number of different systems already have GPS as a shared dependency, so a failure of the GPS signal could cause the simultaneous failure of many services that are probably expected to be independent of each other."

The report suggests that not only are sat-nav systems vulnerable to accidental disruption - for example by solar flares - they are also at risk from deliberate jamming, with jammers fairly inexpensive and readily available. And in addition to complete system failure, those reliant on sat-navs are also at risk from 'dangerously misleading' information which would appear at first glance to be correct.

As a response to the problem, the report has recommended that the government run tests where GPS signals are jammed, in order to evaluate the effectiveness of fail-safes and back-up plans. It also points out that while use of jamming devices is illegal, importing or owning one is not - and urges that this loophole be addressed.