It’s handy when your GPS or satellite navigation system warns you about a traffic jam before you hit it. It’s a bit disconcerting when that system tells you there’s an air raid up ahead.

That’s the alert an Audi A4 gave its driver as he wound his way through London. It’s unclear whether the “air raid” alert is programed into the satnav or whether the system was hacked with a rogue radio transmission (a known problem for GPS systems). From The Register:

Reg reader Graham Schofield was this morning offered perhaps the most sensational reason for being late to work we’ve ever seen: an air raid affecting the A4 in west London. …

Graham tells us he threw an email at Audi to find out just what’s going on, but hasn’t yet received a reply. …

[We would draw our readers' attention to our previous coverage showing how easy it is to send spoof radio data transmissions which will be picked up by car navigation systems and cause them to display all kinds of notifications, from the humdrum traffic jam to bomb alerts (code 1516) or plane crashes (978) to air raids (1481), bullfights (1456) etc.]

If it was a wayward radio signal, the makers of GPS and satnavs should probably work on that security issue so stuff like this doesn’t happen in-the-wild.