AMUSING Sat-Nav glitches are well documented and we have all heard stories of motorists being taken miles out of their way or down impractical routes to reach their destination.

But the scenic route becomes far less amusing when that journey is being made by an ambulance carrying a sick or injured person in need of treatment to hospital.

That was the unpleasant experience of Andrew MacTavish after he displaced a hip and his ambulance was directed down a narrow, bumpy, two mile long lane – a theoretically shorter route, but in practice a longer one.

Mr MacTavish was lucky – relatively speaking – that his injury was not life-threatening and despite being subjected to intense pain, it made little difference to the outcome in this case.

But had this been a more serious injury, one where time was of the utmost essence, we could have seen a very different, far more alarming outcome.

Of course not all drivers will have a comprehensive knowledge of the many maze-like roads around the area, and it would be unfair to expect them to.

But this kind of electronic glitch puts another pressure on an ambulance service which increasingly seems to double as a taxi service between Wycombe Hospital and Stoke Mandeville, thanks to the services shake-up the two sites have seen.

The fact that Wycombe is obviously far closer than Stoke is just another added bump to this tale – a frustrating and painful one for the many patients having to whizz past the town centre hospital to reach one 16 miles away.