Published: June 23, 2009
Oops! Google's camera car takes away a souvenir of Highbridge!

Google's controversial camera car took away a 'tree-mendous' souvenir of Highbridge on Tuesday (June 23rd) when it became tangled up with a low-hanging tree!

The search engine's Street View maps service is currently 'branching' out across Somerset, and the car has been seen capturing images of dozens of roads across the Burnham-On-Sea area in recent days.

But it seems the driver of the high-tech vehicle had not 'twigged' that he had struck a tree during his visit to the Burnham area on Tuesday afternoon.

The vehicle was spotted being driven around with the branches embedded into the canera structure, as pictured!

"The driver seemed to be quite oblivious to the fact that he'd struck a tree," one Highbridge resident told Burnham-On-Sea.com.

"Google presumably wasn't trying to use the leaves to disguise or hide the camera!"

The car was seen in scores of streets across the two towns, including Church Street in Highbridge, where we snapped it.

Burnham-On-Sea.com first reported last week that the car had been seen in Burnham Road, near the entrance to King Alfred School, and passing by The Lighthouse Pub.

Google's use of the cars has sparked privacy concerns in some parts of the country due to 'street view' images of people and their homes being published without prior permission on the search engine's popular mapping website.

No 'street view' images of Burnham-On-Sea have yet appeared on the search engine, although this latest visit makes it highly likely that this will soon change.