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Comment by wh1t3n01s3 | Hacker News Reader

A similar problem happens during unusual big snowfalls in the country or in the mountains. The primary roads turn red because the cars are going really slow cz there is 50cm of snow. So maps redirects you to secondary roads, where there is nobody and even more snow.

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We got hit by a surprise blizzard once (driving from North Dakota to Minnesota, where it went from no trace of snow to blizzard in about 20 minutes of driving). Our car couldn't really make it up any road that wasn't well plowed.

I was trying to navigate to a hotel because I knew we couldn't make it back in this weather, but all the closest hotels weren't on main roads. I was desperately trying to figure out a way to tell Google "prefer main roads" so we could find a hotel that was several miles further away if that meant sticking to safer roads.

I thought a lot about how a feature like that could save lives in an emergency. Does this already exist anywhere?

presumably your intended existing route was already on the main roads? while in navigation mode you can hit the search icon (magnifying glass) to search along the existing route. it won't be perfect but it should work for your use case.

> Does this already exist anywhere?

Of course, any basic offline routing application that doesn't have live traffic feed. Something like Osmand for example.

It's an interesting example of over-optimisation causing unforeseen effects. Perhaps better to rely on naive basic routing combined with external traffic condition prompts instead.

I wonder if you could quickly save offline maps for the area you're in and then kill the GSM connection. So you could still navigate but without traffic information.

Yes you can do this with google maps - have been able for a couple of years. Hit the hamburger then ‘offline maps’ and it will download your geographic region. Great for international travel as it will still pathfind

It does exist. Download offline maps for the region you are in. Then turn off the Internet connection. Ask Google Maps to do the routing while offline.

Offline routing works? Every time that I've previously tried offline routing on downloaded maps it spun for a while and then gave up with a connection error. I was under the impression that the only point of offline maps was for looking up locations, not for navigating to them.

Get Here WeGo, Nokia's maps app. You can download whole states/countries to use offline (it's all vector data so it's not too huge), and traffic data is optional. I've been using it since the Nokia N9 days.

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.here.app.m...

iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/here-wego-city-navigation/id95...

FYI this app has been sold by Nokia to a consortium of German carmakers (Audi, BMW and Daimler).

Yes it works in Google Maps. But only for moderately short drives (say, an hour or so).

Took a 9+ hour drive today, started offline and Google was able to navigate and plot it just fine. We had downloaded the maps for the area ahead of time.

Guessing maybe it outpaces what is downloaded when it starts having problems?

This happened to me once. I was driving to a client while it was snowing. Google Maps told me that there was a faster, less busy way, and avoid the highway.

Yeah it was less busy -- because the locals knew damn well to avoid the crazy slick small roads. At some point, I lost control of the car and skidded off the road. Thankfully I didn't end in the ditch.

Scary, that could kill someone.

No problem, we have Terms of Service to avoid that liability.

Not really, if you die, nobody will probably know this was the case.

Is it your opinion that Google (TOS aside) would be legally responsible for accidents that result from hazards on routes that Google directs propel to?

My opinion, probably not. But based on my legal knowledge (none), it may be arguable. TOS are just another brick in the wall.

I like zooming out on google maps and you can see the red areas of the freeways shows where its snowing and matches the weather map.

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