One thing I'm finding myself not liking about Google Maps is its routing algorithm. It defaults to something I'm not positive on, perhaps shortest possible route or time? But in doing so often has me taking 5 or 10 turns through neighborhoods and poorly lit streets that don't seem designed for through traffic.
When I look at the map, I usually see a way easier way to go, that's usually about the same or maybe a minute or so longer. I wish it defaulted to that. I'd much rather have an easy, two turn 15 minute drive than a zig zag through neighborhood 14 minute drive.
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.
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.
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.
Google seems to have decided that it will show you the alternate routes if it feels like it. Or when you're halfway through the route. Or not even at all. Or especially fun, it will prompt you about a faster route, but with a prompt that disappears after a little while, and when you go to the 'alternate routes' section, that route is nowhere to be found.
I don't like how it is "because we trusted screens"
A physical map that was marked the same way and touted as being up to date would have caused the exact same problem.
At some point things are not going to work and you're going to have rely on human judgement. It sounds like trust was built up enough over time that such reliance was second nature.
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's not about "sensor fusion" in the usual sense - no one is proposing to compare street signs to Google maps to detect map errors. Rather, it's about keeping the same multi-level navigation strategy people used before Google maps.
Remember the offline planning? You may plan the route by the map or write turn-by-turn directions, but as you follow them you should be watching for overall road conditions. Bad traffic jam? Street that seems suspiciously steep? Road closed due to construction? Rain damaged road? There were no expectation of map being always up to date, so you always needed to be aware.
For some reason, some people lost this ability once they switched to Google Maps, and feel completely lost (or write inane articles) if they get bad directions.
Which is silly, as Google Maps made ad-hoc route changes much easier. Road seems bad? Turn left. Or right. You are not going to get lost, Google will always keep showing how to go towards direction of the destination.
Google Maps works pretty well in cities but is terribly unreliable outside of those areas. I have had it route me down all sorts of terrible or nonexistent dirt roads when there were much better options available. There are many stories of drivers blindly following directions, getting stuck, and needing a rescue or worse.
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.
I was that dumb foreigner in Japan that got lost in a forest on an island off the Shimanami Kaido (I think it was Setoda IIRC).
I had to get to a bus stop near a highway in a very rural area, and Google Maps led me through a (albeit gorgeous) winding path through farms and forests, until the underbrush started taking over the road. With the last bus time quickly approaching, and having to get to the next island over as that's where my next hotel was, I was starting to get desperate, rushing through vines and fallen tree limbs.
The path ended with a gate, looking nothing like what Google was telling me the path should.
Eventually I back tracked, and arrived just in time for my bus. I had leaves in my hair and my legs were all scratched, which left this gaijin looking even more like like a sore thumb in this rural island.
All this to say, I was dumb and frankly a bit ill prepared for this particular leg of the trip. In very weak, tepid defence, organizing these smaller details in rural areas of countries whose language you don't speak can be at times challenging.
> 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.
I was using neither street view nor satellite, just the road map directions (I was walking, so using the walking directions). Judging by the overgrowth and fallen vegetation, I would guess the road fell out of use, was fenced off for safety, and the map wasn't updated.
Mm. Google Maps will sometimes confidently suggest roads which without that recommendation would have seemed quite unsuitable. So people put their instincts aside and think Google must know better ... only to regret it later.
It would be helpful if Google could add a few qualifiers like "Note that this is a very steep and mostly single-lane unpaved road" or "This road leads through an unsafe neighbourhood", followed by "An alternative route would be ..."
Ha... It's not that they can't do it now, it's just Google fear the uproar the woke brigade will inevitable make about how dare Google classify poor black neighborhoods as unsafe. But yeah I agree with you, that feature would be damn helpful, especially for someone like my wife driving home at night.
I think it is unrelated. Regardless of how dangerous is an area, there are still people who libe there and have to go there or through there for various reasons.
It is not like life stops when places have an higher crime rate. Peoole still conduct business, have family outings and whatnot.
Besides the feeling of safety is totally subjective and some white neighborhoods you might consider safe as a white person might be unsafe to people of colors going there because they will be viewed under the bias of systemic racism and might be seen as a threat to people.
Absolutely. Same with the favelas – locals are safer than strangers.
Incidentally, the UK government website contains specific warnings about using GPS navigation in Brazil:
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The security situation in many favelas is unpredictable. Visiting a favela can be dangerous. Avoid all favelas, including favela tours marketed to tourists and any accommodation, restaurants or bars advertised as being within a favela.
You should:
– make sure the suggested route does not take you into a favela if you’re using GPS navigation
– avoid entering unpaved, cobbled or narrow streets which may lead into a favela - tourists have been shot after accidentally entering favelas
If you’re unsure about a location, check with your hotel or the local authorities.
I ran in to all sorts of problems with Google Maps and Waze navigating me in the UK.
Google Maps cannot understand that just because a road's speed limit is theoretically 60 mph, doesn't mean it's ever possible to travel at that speed on that road. So it would keep sending me down little tiny narrow twisty, single lane country roads that you're rarely ever going to break 20mph on.
I grew up driving those roads, so in general I was fine and comfortable driving on them, but it did mean that it was sending us on the slowest possible route.
The only time it'd not try to do that was if enough people had been down in recent enough time for it to think the road was suffering from heavy traffic. There's no way to actually indicate to Google the nature of the roads, either.
It always struck me of being very indicative of a US centric perspective, written with the assumption that roads are wide and open.
edit: It has been something like 10-15 years since I last used a TomTom GPS unit in the UK, but I never had problems with them sending me down narrow roads.
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.)
Given Waze / Maps is only ever as good as the available data, I wonder if the author took a moment to report the closed roads and open highway. You can complain about maps not being all knowing, but did they do the minimum to help others? At this point it's a global social activity.
Maps changes are processed quite quickly got roads.
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)
> I don't know of any way to report "open highway" to Google Maps at all.
Long press, scroll, "report a problem on ...". I sent multiple weird ones and they all got actioned.
> I don't know why you call Google Map editing is "a global social activity"
Because we all use it directly or indirectly. It's a really bad situation that it's often the default and it can be incorrect and it's all private and closed. We can complain about it and use OSM or something else. But at some point your travel will depend on how correct Google Maps is in this area. And everyone collectively fixing it up makes your life a tiny bit less bad.
I contribute to OSM more, but still fix the roads on Google Maps in my area and add photos for playgrounds. I'm not going to get people to switch just because of trivial inconveniences in gmaps.
"Russian Topo Maps"-app is the best if you want to survive in wilderness of Japan and Norway. The material from 1960's before people moved to big cities on both those places. You can find overgrown pathways and railroads which will help your near-death trek to the nearest Seven-Eleven.
Anecdotally, quality of the routing seems to be going down. I checked for a 10 minute walk in London and it suggested a 9 min route to take a bus for 3 min and walk 6 min, the secondary route was my intended 10 min walk. Obviously I wasn't going to pay to save a minute of travel time.
Also while driving, it could be confirmation bias but I find myself ignoring odd turns when I know I can keep going straight and turn later based on familiarity, the funny thing is I became familiar with these routes because of gmaps while I started driving years ago (this is with no traffic)
So, yeah, Google Maps sent the author down the wrong way, but how are paper maps going to be any better? The paper maps aren't going to know that those roads are closed, either.
What does the author propose as an alternative? He's in Sicily, so he can't rely on his own built-up knowledge. Maybe he's suggesting asking locals, but nothing's stopping him from doing that, and it's not so easy.
So yeah, online maps have downsides, but what concretely is the proposal?
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?
> We followed the navigation apps, and after 30 minutes of driving, they dropped us off at a closed road. We turned around, drove another 20 minutes or so, and encountered another shuttered lane.
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.
> We drove down an increasingly narrow and desolate road. The tarmac disappeared, replaced by lose stones. It got steeper. The track turned into potholed grass and dirt. Huge rocks reared out of the earth.
...
> And it was all Google Maps’ fault.
I mean, it was 100 % your fault, but you can blame a stupid phone if it makes you feel better about having zero common sense, and being a poor driver.
Paper maps can be, and almost certainly all are, wrong. 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?
Even if you run into an island where there should be no island, or drive into a space that should be fit for cars but is not, your hands are on the wheel and your feet are on the pedals.
>Consider this: have you ever been in a situation where you’ve seen a beautiful landscape or watched something funny happening and your first thought is, “how can I take a picture of this for Instagram?”
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.
You can't even see out of a submarine but still the commander, executive officer, and chief of the boat of that submarine were fired because no matter what technology or capabilities exist it is the responsibility of the person in control of the machine to control the machine.
When I look at the map, I usually see a way easier way to go, that's usually about the same or maybe a minute or so longer. I wish it defaulted to that. I'd much rather have an easy, two turn 15 minute drive than a zig zag through neighborhood 14 minute drive.