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Comment by filleokus | Hacker News Reader

I think there is much potential in this area. Google Maps et. al have basically solved A->B in most cities, most of the times. Strava has helped me with answering "I'm in a new city and want to bike 1-2 hours, where should I go" with their heat maps and route planner.

It would be nice if Google got their hands on the Strava data and integrated it for more casual bike-navigation.

I would also love a mode which lowers the cognitive load of navigation while biking. Perhaps I could save a minute by taking a short-cut involving 10 different turns, but when in unfamiliar territory (and hence using navigation software in the first place), each turn poses some difficulty. So many times I've missed to take a turn because the audio cues have been so ever slightly off.

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>I would also love a mode which lowers the cognitive load of navigation while biking. Perhaps I could save a minute by taking a short-cut involving 10 different turns, but when in unfamiliar territory (and hence using navigation software in the first place), each turn poses some difficulty. So many times I've missed to take a turn because the audio cues have been so ever slightly off.

I would love having this mode for cars as well. Sometimes to shave off a couple of minutes, maps will route along the hypotenuse of a right triangle via a lot of turns on smaller roads. I would have preferred just going along the main road and making a single turn, even if that took a few minutes longer. This is especially important at night where the road signage may have reduced visibility.

Yeah, i think this is even more important for driving. on a bike, if i take a wrong turn it's no big deal, i'll turn around. in a car, i could be driving a while before i have an opportunity.

I would pay real money for a navigation app that would tell me which route was the easiest drive.

My problem is too many left turns at stop signs... here in Los Angeles, those are basically impossible, but Waze loves to try to make you take them.

By jove, I think it's trying to kill us.*

I was driving the other day and pondered whether measuring pulse/blood pressure/other factors that indicate stress while traveling a recommended route (or even passively, correlating to time+day) could positively inform route quality.

(*It honestly seems to prefer them, even in Seattle where everything is a reflective sheet of glass and pedestrians are shrouded in urban camouflage 300 days of the year.)

I feel that pain. I live on a side street right off a very busy road. EVERY time, it suggests that I make a death-defying left turn, even though I could go one street over and turn with a stoplight.

Sometimes I do choose to make that left turn myself, though. In light traffic (middle of the night, etc.), it's easy and it's faster. In heavy traffic, it can be impossible.

If only they had access to traffic data, and if only they had people skilled in algorithms and AI, they could use those two things to figure out when to suggest (unprotected) left turns and when not to. Oh wait... they do have that data and that expertise.

100% on this.

Every time I use Waze, I end up pulling my hair out from all the stress-inducing second-shaving measures. Left turns zig-zagging across the city? What could be bad about that??

The idea of low cognitive-load routing is great. One could take in to consideration "how does this driver/cyclist typically navigate to the point they've requested," and providing a route that augments an already well-worn mental path with something a little better and easier (or faster) as well.

Does Strava take user feedback as an input? It irks me how Maps/others seem to not take elevation, road condition, or general "pleasant-ness" in to consideration when it comes to routing …

Huh. That is the reason I used waze: it's the only app that would take advantage of back streets.

That can backfire when Waze routes hundreds of cars onto the same narrow back streets (eg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKy4ekd_SHU)

Anecdotally, my impression was that Waze users tend to prefer routes that keep you moving and engaged (by making turns), while Google maps has tended towards picking equally fast routes but that might be more stop-and-go and boring.

… which reveals a lot of implied preferences that have been made. For in-city drives, what I'm looking for will depend what mood I'm in: Do I want to zone out and listen to a podcast? Blare music, scoot around, have fun? Take the scenic route?

I would agree that Maps and Waze strike me almost as opposing forces in how they do things … without making it apparent.

> Blare music, scoot around, have fun?

This is exactly why I hate Waze: people "scooting around" are exactly the worst ones to have on residential back-roads, where children might be playing, people sleeping, and where there's less often a cycle path.

Fortunately, traffic engineers in the larger European cities sometimes block off residential roads to cars to prevent "rat running".

Hmm!

Maybe routing apps should have an initial onboarding (or route-specific questions) similar to 401(k) / investing apps: "what is your tolerance for risk?" and "how well do you know this area?" and "do you like calm or active routes?"

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