Google Maps is ruining us

FWIW: if you have an iPhone, the routing on Apple Maps is fairly conservative. The only time I've ever had it generate routes with weird detours was to avoid heavy traffic or road closures; under other circumstances, its routes tend to be straightforward, sticking to major roads where possible.

What happened to the days of showing multiple routes and getting to choose?

The sad thing is it used to be much better before they started adding the whole 'Eco' thing where it supposedly finds a more gas-efficient route. Except the algorithm seems to fail to account for things like start-and-stop and elevation changes, so it will send you climbing over a mountain road that's half a mile shorter than a nearby highway, and you end up burning twice as much fuel.

It's problematic enough where I live that I usually set the starting point for directions at the on-ramp at a nearby highway because the directions maps gives me for getting to that spot are often patently bad.

They really need a way to have users customize the routing much more. For example, there should be an option to minimize the number of steps in the route. Or at least be able to tell it that 'shortcuts' better save me more than 10% of the time to my destination, not a single minute off a 3-hour drive.

I miss my Delorme Street Atlas, where I could set up custom "avoid" and "prefer" zones (geographical or road-based), could customize preference by road type (via speed limits), and even draw my own roads.

It did though require bulky Windows tablet with special car mount... I don't miss that part at all.

Fun story, I grew up on an incredibly steep street which dead ends - it gets too steep - and then continues again at the top of the hill.

Well, one edition of some Thomas Guide had this street connecting.

Every 5 or so years, some poor, poor, truck driver would get stuck on the hill, and need to carefully reverse down this tiny street and its ridiculous hill. One year, a giant semi hauling glass windows got stuck at the top of the dead end. He was unable to reverse, and so we had to call every neighbor to move their cars off of the hill to give the driver room to turn around. Took most of the day.

I have some inkling that not having the urge to lock in to a single input (as TFA puts it) is not universal. One of the most common reasons (IIRC) for failing the RN's submarine command course (the "perisher") is excessive reliance on a single instrument -- these are officers with 5-10 years of experience by the time they enter the course, and the cream of the crop to have even qualified -- and with enough stress, even they lose the ability to do "sensor fusion".

Anecdotally, I don't know anyone who's constantly doubting the map and cross-checking it against signs the way I do when driving or walking. Then again, my first thought in basically any situation is what the worst case could be! so...

It doesn't even work that well in cities now either. For example, it's particularly bad about suggesting routes where you have to turn left without a protected turn lane or light, on a one-lane road, during peak traffic times. Even though if you drive two blocks down, there's a protected left onto the same exact street you're trying to get to, where you can make the turn much more safely, and not block traffic.

I've come to find that the routing algorithm is pretty terrible anywhere that google doesn't have a large amount of employees. SF Bay Area? Generally pretty good directions. Eastern suburbs of Portland, OR? Barely passable, will make you take some really iffy roads. Rural Idaho? Good luck, you probably should have packed a paper map.

> The path ended with a gate, looking nothing like what Google was telling me the path should.

Really? Did you look at the satellite or street view?

The regular map view only shows roads the way they are classified by the local administrations. If a dirt path is considered the same as a small rural road in that country, it will be shown the same. However you will see it if you take the time to check satellite view. Also, if there is no street view available, it also means that the operator of a google car choosed not going there so that gives you an indication. I guess they could use that information but do not because street view do not operate universally the same way or the frequency they visit most places is not high enough to be reliable.

How can it get you shot?

I don't know how Google Maps works (I quit paying attention when they stopped letting me fix the maps directly), but I know a thing or two about Waze.

With enough use, Waze learns the actual speeds at which people drive through a given road segment. It even learns that people may drive a segment at different speeds based on time of day. It then uses this speed data as part of its routing.

The emphasis above is very intentional, for two reasons:

1. No data is no data. If there isn't enough use on a given road segment, then it doesn't have any meaningful speed data with which to work. This is particularly problematic in rural areas that are seldom-traveled, and where the locals already know how to get where they're going so they seldom (if ever) use Waze (and thus generate little or zero real-world speed data for Waze to work with).

2. We may have our preferences towards "fastest" or "shortest" routing, but the actual-routing is not that straight forward. Depending on the area, there may or may not be different road types defined by map editors (things like "Primary Street" or "Minor Highway"). The routing tends to guide people onto more-major roads when they make sense for a given route.

2.1. But again, no data is no data. In areas where these definitions have not been put into place, it doesn't have the data to allow it to prefer routing down a nice, wide, straight-ish road instead of a narrow and twisty road.

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Now, there are some solutions to these things:

1. Drive the crazy route. Drive it sanely, but drive it with Waze running (it does not have to be providing directions). This generates data, and that data can eventually help those who come after you. (Many people have serious issues with partaking in this kind of effort, but this is the mechanism by which the database gets populated with speed data regardless of one's views.)

2. Edit the map. Follow the national and regional guidelines, make good edits, and fix that shit. (Many people have serious issues partaking in this kind of effort as well, but this is the mechanism by which road types are defined regardless of one's views.)

I don't know of any way to report "open highway" to Google Maps at all.

There is a way to report road closure in the Google Maps app, but it does not change the map at all - it puts the red "stop" sign, and it's intended for temporary road closures. It would not been appropriate for reporting OP's road which was open, but required high-clearance vehicle to navigate.

I don't know why you call Google Map editing is "a global social activity" -- my experience is just the opposite. Google Maps data sources are opaque and impenetrable, some streets might stay out of date for years, while the next town over is updated very quickly. It's also full of glitches (for example there was a multiple-weeks interval where it thought a small segment of major street near me was closed, so every route had useless detour around it)

The road wasn't closed. Google Maps was wrong.

And with a paper map, you would have the intuition that it might be stale, so you ask a local. Whereas Google Maps is marketed as the latest and greatest and most up-to-date, so you wind up trusting it, even over your own senses sometimes!

The trust is the mistake, but it's hard not to fall into that trap when it works reasonably well most of the time. But it's a fragile system--when it fails, you're truly SOL. Whereas paper and people are anti-fragile--they're less trustworthy but because of that, they're also more resilient. Who hasn't gotten directions from a stranger and wondered if they were a troll or an imbecile? And then either gotten a second opinion or proceeded with caution?

It'd be interesting to see if the road is mostly used by farmers but other locals avoid it, and Google theoritically has all that info, assuming they have Android phones: a farmer lives near the fields and spend a lot of their daytime on the fields, a local lives in the village.

You need to read the next paragraph of the article.

> It is normal to blame a paper map if you sail off the edge of the Earth where the map says there ought to be more sea?

That's what the US Navy does (in part) when a $3 billion submarine hits an underwater mountain.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/01/politics/navy-submarine-under...

>No.

>Something is wrong with this person's brain.

I hope we're all self-aware enough to know that we're making these comments on a website that was ostensibly designed to support the industry that is/has been responsible for convincing the collective masses that everything needs to be shared on social media and that we need to be wholly reliant on our smartphones just to make it through the day. I don't disagree that this person is responsible for their own choices, but it's not like there hasn't been a tremendous push to get people to view life like this.

Please don't cross into personal attack. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html