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Comment by thedanbob | Hacker News Reader

In fact, I'm pretty sure this already happens and the results are exactly what you'd expect. Some of the "alternate routes" Google Maps has suggested for me in the past are almost certainly due to other people making unscheduled detours for gas or whatever, and the algorithm thinks "oh this random loop on a side street is popular, let's suggest it". And then anyone silly enough to follow the suggestion just adds more signal to the noise.

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Google Maps has some strange feedback loops. I frequently drive across the Bay Bridge to Delaware beaches. There are 2 or 3 roughly equal routes with everyone going to the same destination. Google will find a "shorter" route every 5 minutes. Naturally, Maps is smart enough to detect traffic, but not smart enough to equally distribute users to prevent it. It creates a traffic jam on route A, then tells all the users to use route B which causes a jam there, and so on.

It hadn't even occurred to me that there are places where enough people are using Google Maps while driving to cause significant impact on traffic patterns. Being car-free (and smartphone-free) really gives a different perspective.

This is also problematic in cases where navigation apps are not updated and drivers start taking routes they are no longer authorized to take.

Are you Theodore Kaczynski ghost? :)

Seriously what job you do that allows you to not have a smartphone ?

Not OP: I have a smartphone for my own personal use but don't use it for work at all. If my employer wants me to use specific phone apps they can provide one for me like they do a laptop.

yeah so you got a smartphone, the dude was saying he doesn't have a smartphone.

no smartphone make it a real pain in the ass to do most things nowadays, job is one of the biggest but it's not the least. to even connect to my bank account on my computer i need a phone.

Cell phones exist which are not smartphones, and everyone who uses phones for 2FA is happy to send 2FA codes to a "dumb" phone. They only have your phone number, after all.

Well my bank doesn't give me the possibility to use SMS code. It's obligatory to use the app on a verified phone and put a pin.

Long before any use of LLMs, OsmAnd would direct you, if you were driving past Palo Alto, to take a congested offramp to the onramp that faced it across the street. There is no earthly reason to do that; just staying on the freeway is faster and safer.

So it's not obvious to me that patently crazy directions must come from watching people's behavior. Something else is going on.

In Australia the routes seem to be overly influenced by truck drivers, at least out of the cities. Maps will recommend you take some odd town bypass when just going down Main Street is easier.

I imagine what you saw is some other frequent road users making choices that get ranked higher.

> if you were driving past Palo Alto, to take a congested offramp to the onramp that faced it across the street

If you're talking about that left turn into Alma with the long wait instead of going into the Stanford roundabout and then the overpass, it still does that.

OsmAnd doesn't use traffic data. You can enable traffic map layers by feeding a reverse-engineered URL, though.

I'm not talking about use of traffic data. In the abstract, assuming you are the only person in the world who owns a car, that route would be a very bad recommendation. Safety concerns would be lower, but still, there's no reason you'd ever do that.

safety concerns would probably actually be higher since the most dangerous places on roads are areas where traffic crosses and conflicts (the road you cross to get from the offramp to onramp)

I've seen this type of thing with OsmAnd too. My hypothesis is that someone messed up when drawing the map, and made the offramp an extension of the highway. But I haven't actually verified this.

An example I notice frequently on interstate highways that go through large cities is GM suggesting you get off on an exit, take the access road and skip one of no exits, then get back on at the next ramp. It does it especially often during rush hour traffic. Denver is where I've noticed it the most, but it's not limited to that area by any means.

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