321–330 of 397 posts
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Is it? I think we can decide for ourselves.
I don't know; I rented a truck in an NYC outer borough for a move and had the hardest time navigating through the city because I had no easily accessible way to figure out where trucks were allowed.
They gave reason: navigation system.
This video is a bit of a seminal moment for me. It's made me realise the information and tools we rely on and assume are true are actually just systematic fabrications produced by self-serving corporations, and are not necessarily the truth whatsoever. What does this mean for Google Search? (We had this discussion the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22139421 )
What a predictably cynical interpretation. Your immediate reaction to the application of imperfect models to the real world need not be one of distrust as if slighted but rather simple acknowledgment that this is just the best we can currently do.
1. Google doesn't do anything to educate their users about this reality. 2. If corporations like Google really wanted to do "the best we can currently do", they'd try harder but instead they just do "the best we need to do to make billions of dollars from collecting people's data."
Case in point, turns out Yandex image search is better than Google's. Google won't try harder if no one knows there's something better.
I used to work for a mapping & navigation company that offered a traffic API service. It worked by using anonymized cell phone data to predict traffic patterns. I once heard a story that during peak hour, every five minutes or so the jams on a highway would magically disappear then reappear. After some head scratching, turns out there is a train track inbetween the lanes of the highway full of high speed commuters th…
How did you fix that? I’ve been wondering how google and the others differentiate between cars on the free vs express lanes.
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So I'm stuck in a traffic jam, and google maps is telling me I can take an alternate route to avoid it and save 25 minutes vs waiting in the traffic jam. Something that occurs to me as I sit in this traffic... what portion of all the other driver's around me also looking at google maps? Is Google Maps telling them to take the same alternate route as me? Are they all going to do it? If they all do it, does the alterna…
Presumably, this alternate route won't save you 25 minutes by the time you and others reroute. However if it saves you 10 minutes and reduces the delay on the original route by 10 minutes since there are now fewer cars idling, then everyone is better off.
Let's say enough cars take the suggestion to slow down that route by 10 minutes and speed up this one by 10 minutes. Even if you end up saving five minutes relative to the original estimate, you'd have saved ten minutes staying put.
A similar problem happens during unusual big snowfalls in the country or in the mountains. The primary roads turn red because the cars are going really slow cz there is 50cm of snow. So maps redirects you to secondary roads, where there is nobody and even more snow.
Yeah it was less busy -- because the locals knew damn well to avoid the crazy slick small roads. At some point, I lost control of the car and skidded off the road. Thankfully I didn't end in the ditch.
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This is an understated problem. Google used to regularly take me through a route that involves a left turn in a major road and multiple crossings where cross traffic won’t stop. Literally two blocks from the suggested left turn is a left turn arrow signal which also avoids the dangerous crossings. It’s both dangerous and anxiety inducing and doesn’t save time either.
This problem baffles me because all that has to be done to correct it is increase the estimated time of arrival penalty for making an unprotected left turn so that the routing algorithm doesn't mistakenly think it's faster. Ditto for U-turns, which Google constantly suggests (rather than turning onto a side street and U-turning there or going around the block) even when they are impossible (median in the way), danger…
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I hate roundabouts. I live in France, and we have them everywhere. They're a huge clusterfuck that does not win any time, and when misused can be a lot more dangerous than a properly planned intersection. Of all the accidents I've driven past on my daily drives, all of them happened on roundabouts. I hate them.
> Of all the accidents I've driven past on my daily drives, all of them happened on roundabouts. In localities with few/no roundabouts, the vast majority of accidents still happen at intersections. Intersections of roads are the most prone to accidents (for fairly obvious reasons), with or without roundabouts. I believe there is research showing roundabouts are actually quite a bit safer in general, but it's possible…
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I wish cities had roundabouts instead of intersections, so that would not be a problem :)
Roundabouts only work in the burbs. In cities, they are death traps for pedestrians and cyclists.
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I wish it had a “no left turns” feature like they have for avoiding tolls.
I wish cities had roundabouts instead of intersections, so that would not be a problem :)