Hacker News Reader

We have a related problem in the UK. Sometimes very small "country lanes" have no explicit speed limit, so defaults to national speed limit of 60mph, which you would have to be suicidal to drive at (or just hate your car), but Google maps still often route finds along these roads.

An example: https://maps.app.goo.gl/HhMWPgE2gznsPsQ9A

View on HN

Except that Google uses an average of the recorded speed of vehicles using a road segment, linked to time of day, and not the speed limit.

This. Google has a major advantage in that they have a massive dataset. They can use their data to improve the cost function even in real time to detect traffic.

... which, given that most people are speeding, makes their estimates completely unrealistic if you want to actually obey the law.

So they should add a "route options" -> "follow speed limits" checkbox, or track your speed compared to the average driver.

Winding British country lanes aren’t a bug, they’re a feature!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com