A Buckinghamshire mum’s sat nav appears to have taken the spirit of Samuel L. Jackson, repeatedly branding her a ‘motherf*cker’.
Tracy Dockerill, 53, was gobsmacked when the calm woman’s voice on her TomTom switched to a foul-mouthed man, announcing, ‘You have reached your destination motherf*cker.’
The care worker, from Denham, believes the machine is getting revenge on her after shouting at it for leading her astray on occasions. Since the sat nav started turning the air blue six months ago, it’s been spouting quite a few choice words – for example, ‘Turn right ars*hole.’
Check out the video of the sat nav in action below:
Tracy’s daughter, Jade, 22, found out about the machine’s nasty language when they were in the car together earlier this month.
Tracy said:
It was a bit like it was my dirty secret and I felt a bit ashamed. I did wonder if I was hearing things at first. I’ve been using it for months with a lady’s voice and then all of a sudden one day it said ‘turn right ars*hole’ in a chap’s voice – well I nearly crashed the car.
I remember thinking ‘oh my god this is dreadful’ and told it ‘I can’t believe you’re talking to me like that’ then all of a sudden it swore at me again but even worse. It then said ‘you have reached your destination motherf*cker’. It’s like it’s possessed. You can imagine how shocked I was.
When I was a child I had my mouth washed out with soap by my mum if I swore so I don’t swear. I didn’t laugh, I was put out by it.
Tracy’s sister Donna gave her the TomTom about a year ago because she gets ‘lost quite easily’. While she couldn’t get to grips with it at first, having to ask people on the street to give her a hand, she eventually learned. Alas, about six months ago, it turned mean.
‘It’s hit and miss, he doesn’t come on all the time,’ Tracy said, explaining he normally pipes up when she drives past a turning.
Tracy added:
I would shout ‘you’re a stupid sat nav, you don’t have a clue where we’re going, I’m not listening to you anymore’. All of a sudden it just started talking to me and swearing at me, I was most put out.
After confessing to her daughter the issue she was having, obviously she though it was hilarious. While they initially suspected her 17-year-old brother Ethan, they soon realised that wasn’t the case.
Jade said:
I wasn’t convinced that the sat nav was swearing at her, I thought maybe she was mishearing it. Then it did it and I was crying with laughter. I knew people wouldn’t believe me so I tried recording it, it was really frustrating when I kept missing this voice.
I have minutes of video on my phone just trying to capture it and managed to catch it when we arrived at our destination. I confronted Ethan over it and he said he hadn’t touched it. It doesn’t sound like his voice, he’s never in the car with and has sworn on all our lives it’s not him.
While it doesn’t shock Tracy to the same degree as it used to, she still ‘wouldn’t miss him’ if he disappeared.
TomTom offered an explanation: apparently, it’s likely Tracy’s device was tampered with by a previous cheeky owner.
A TomTom spokesperson said:
It’s likely that Tracy has a sat nav where it’s possible to record your own voice guidance (this is possible on some of our older devices). Whether it’s a previous owner, or a cheeky family member or friend, we can assure Tracy that it’s not the sat nav shouting obscenities at her. If Tracy changes the voice on her sat nav, the swearing will be gone.
Because this story brought such a smile to our faces, we’re going to send Tracy our latest and greatest TomTom Go Premium sat nav. It’s the most feature-packed, best connected, and smartest navigation device on the market, and best of all, it doesn’t have a potty mouth!
She can also add more fun to her drive with TomTom navigation voices such as Brian Blessed, Billy Connolly or even Spongebob Squarepants.
If anyone’s likely to tell you to f*ck off, surely it’s Billy Connolly?
If you have a story you want to tell, send it to UNILAD via story@unilad.com
After graduating from Glasgow Caledonian University with an NCTJ and BCTJ-accredited Multimedia Journalism degree, Cameron ventured into the world of print journalism at The National, while also working as a freelance film journalist on the side, becoming an accredited Rotten Tomatoes critic in the process. He’s now left his Scottish homelands and took up residence at UNILAD as a journalist.