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Comment by ventana | Hacker News Reader

The same things keeps happening every time I find myself stuck in traffic on the interstate. Out of nowhere, a popup appears in Google Maps: a faster route is available! 4 minutes faster! Unless either the passenger or the driver are fast enough to hit "No thanks", the change auto-applies, and Google now wants me to exit the interstate at the nearest exit and drive some random road I had no idea about, to rejoin the interstate a few miles ahead. Of course, a bunch of other vehicles in the same traffic jam got the same notification, so that minor road now get a sizable fraction of the interstate traffic, all of which then struggles to merge back.

Seeing this again and again. We call it a "Google detour" in the family, and rarely agree to the change of the route.

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Yes, I find it ironic that Google is recommending that people take varied routes, when it's their very app that often puts a bunch of people on an obscure, same route. Many times I've taken one of its shortcuts, only to see a bunch of cars in front of me and behind me taking the same shortcut, clearly not one people would normally take.

I've had this experience. 10 minutes in it hit me that we're all only here only because Google suggested so.

It was some kind of dirt road that almost never had this sort of traffic and you could see that from the faces of the locals, as we were passing them by at maybe twice walking speed.

It once made me exit the highway, using the nearly empty exit ramp, then do a U-turn on the surface street and get back using the lightly used entrance ramp. Wow, all that effort to move about 250m forward in traffic, saving me perhaps 30 seconds of time on my 3 hour drive. Very "over-optimized" software does bizarre stuff that no sane person would ever do.

Now they did the obvious thing and load balanced the alternative routes. Somebody could have done this long ago and got a promo.

I’ve just started taking surface roads out of Charlotte at peak hours because I know how to get around, and any route that’s part of Apple/Google maps defaults will invariably be clogged with everyone following their directions. Surface streets tend to be blissfully open these days.

So many god damn unprotected left turns on mapping software. Some of them illegal too like asking you to do it when a sign says no left turns during listed hours.

If the original route was to continue on the current road, and the revised one is to come off, then you don't need to interact with the screen at all to reject it. Just continue driving, and the route will reset once you pass the exit.

Same. This is why I switched to Apple Maps. Sometimes the Google detours would end in dangerous situations, like a left turn with no light across a major road. And it would be to save 2 minutes-ridiculous!

Apple Maps does this too but the threshold seems to be higher - it's a lot less willing to do it.

I've had Google try to route me across private property (an apartment complex parking lot) to avoid a signaled intersection and save a couple of minutes.

> The same things keeps happening every time I find myself stuck in traffic on the interstate.

Reminder: you are not in traffic, you are traffic. :)

Me too. It’s infuriating and unsafe. I don’t drive often, but when I do it’s out of the city where I’m unfamiliar and need a map.

So I also stopped using Google Maps for driving.

Who at Google seriously believes that it’s good idea to 1) unpredictably change the route someone chose mid-drive, and 2) to distract them while driving with a pop up notification that must be interacted with just to maintain the route.

If I choose a route, I chose it for a reason. Don’t change it while I’m driving.

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