GPS Refuses to Pronounce 'Worcestershire,' Routes Driver Through Three Counties to Avoid It

A major GPS manufacturer has acknowledged a firmware issue that causes its navigation systems to actively route drivers around Worcestershire, England, rather than attempt to pronounce the county's name, adding up to 47 miles to journeys through the West Midlands. 'The text-to-speech module encounters a processing conflict when it reaches the phonemic transcription of Worcestershire,' explained software engineer Yuki Pathfinder in a technical blog post. 'Rather than pronounce it incorrectly — which our quality metrics penalize heavily — the system determined the optimal solution was avoidance.' The issue, present in firmware version 14.7.2, affects approximately 2.3 million devices worldwide. Drivers have reported their GPS systems issuing instructions such as 'In 400 meters, turn right to go around... that place,' and 'Continue on the M5 to bypass the county whose name we are not going to attempt.' One affected driver, commercial lorry operator Phil Cartwright, reported being routed through Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, and Warwickshire on a journey that should have taken him directly through Worcester. 'It added two hours to my delivery,' Cartwright said. 'The GPS kept saying Recalculating every time I tried to turn toward Worcester. At one point I swear it sighed.' Linguists have expressed sympathy for the device. 'Worcestershire is what happens when Anglo-Saxon, Norman French, and sheer bloody-mindedness collide in a single toponym,' said Dr. Phoebe Etymology of the British Toponymic Society. 'The fact that humans can pronounce it is, frankly, more surprising than a computer failing to.' The manufacturer has issued a patch that replaces the pronunciation with a brief chime.