Travelling from Durango Colorado to Reserve New Mexico, Google Maps routed me to a "road" that was simply a dry stream bed, in the middle of Navajo Nation, in high desert wilderness, many miles from human habitation. It happened gradually. First I was directed to a well maintained gravel road, then to dirt track, which forked and forked and slowly faded to nothing. I was driving a 4x4, had an almost full tank, a load…
> I think most sane drivers would have bailed at the first turn off of the pavement. Why? If it's an area unfamiliar to them then it's very reasonable to assume that Google might know it better than you.
They wholesale imported US government data that was developed to assist in finding residential dwellings (rather than for efficient navigation, TIGER). They've updated in lots of areas, but there's not really any good reason to assume they've updated it everywhere.
OpenStreetMap did the same thing and it's an ongoing hassle. It gets better all the time, but there's a lot of those features in sparsely populated areas.
Travelling from Durango Colorado to Reserve New Mexico, Google Maps routed me to a "road" that was simply a dry stream bed, in the middle of Navajo Nation, in high desert wilderness, many miles from human habitation. It happened gradually. First I was directed to a well maintained gravel road, then to dirt track, which forked and forked and slowly faded to nothing. I was driving a 4x4, had an almost full tank, a load…
>I think most sane drivers would have bailed at the first turn off of the pavement. Well-maintained gravel road seems pretty reasonable in that area of the country. But I'd probably consult my paper map at that point which I would also always have for that area of the country (had I not done so already). I'll mostly put my trust in Google etc. to find my hotel in Silicon Valley. Not so much to get me somewhere in the…
I can barely trust google maps in SV, because it seems to go very far out of its way to make a simple route complicated, usually along the lines of doing a U turn on a highway and a dozen other turns in order to save one minute on el camino. It took me quite a while to get acquainted with the area because i was always doing these navigation gymnastics instead of straight simple routes.
Travelling from Durango Colorado to Reserve New Mexico, Google Maps routed me to a "road" that was simply a dry stream bed, in the middle of Navajo Nation, in high desert wilderness, many miles from human habitation. It happened gradually. First I was directed to a well maintained gravel road, then to dirt track, which forked and forked and slowly faded to nothing. I was driving a 4x4, had an almost full tank, a load…
Same thing happened to me in the B.C. interior north of Kamloops. I stopped when the “road” became a dry stream bed blocked by a cow that seemed as confused as I was by my presence in that particular place.
I was about to say, sometimes Google Maps point you right through people's gated farms in that area. It's beyond me how Google maps those out as public roads
It was a Garmin and it was 15 years ago, but it attempted to send me down a legit ski slope near Lake Tahoe. Good times. Like it sent you through the parking area and behind the club house and everything. I’ve been a skeptic ever since. Then again, I got a land cruiser 3 years ago (with a 24 gallon secondary gas tank) so if a gps says to try something these days I usually do!
Maybe the ski run it tried to take you on used to be a logging road.
My understanding is that most U.S. ski areas are on leased federal land formerly leased to logging companies, and the resorts go into the clear-cut areas, remove stumps, put in chair lifts, etc. The cat tracks are the remnants of the logging roads used to get the equipment in and trees out.
Travelling from Durango Colorado to Reserve New Mexico, Google Maps routed me to a "road" that was simply a dry stream bed, in the middle of Navajo Nation, in high desert wilderness, many miles from human habitation. It happened gradually. First I was directed to a well maintained gravel road, then to dirt track, which forked and forked and slowly faded to nothing. I was driving a 4x4, had an almost full tank, a load…
Ha. I think I have an even better story. Near Salt Lake City there's something like an island with two roads connecting it to the mainland: one on the north and the other on the south. My plan was to drive to the island via its north road (paved and well maintained) and at sunset leave the island via the south road. I got suspicious when in complete darkness the rather narrow road across a weird desert-like substance of unknown density turned into an off-road trail with rather big rocks on it. I figured that if I kept moving at this pace, about 10 mph, I would get to the mainland in 1-2 hours, which was ok as I was young, full of energy and had plenty of time to waste. 40 minutes later I met a real obstacle: a segment of the road was gone, perhaps it sank into that sandy something, or perhaps someone intentionally made the road unpassable to save drivers like me from an even bigger trouble. Anyways, after entertaining the idea of driving around this gap (I had 4x4), I decided that the sandy substance might be a quicksand of some sort and getting stuck there without a car at midnight would be rather dangerous, so I made a u-turn and at the same crawling speed started driving back. The thing is, whoever was maintaining that island, rightfully decided that it was night time and it was time to close a gates across the only unpaved trail across the island. That would be a rather big problem, and I was even considering to break the gates, but luckily there was a very rocky way around across the bushes, that was quite passable on my truck. So I did just that and kept driving for another mile or so until the road got blocked by some strange luminous sparks, that upon closer examination appeared a herd of bisons. Those bisons were quite melanholic and didn't see anything wrong with camping on the only road, but eventually they cleared the path and 3 hours later I finally left that island.
Google maps has marked my parents in laws drive way as a road. The drive way is quite long as they are on a farm. Due to a right of way for an owner of a field who owns an enclave within their land they can’t put a gate up. It’s quite unmistakable you are going into someone’s house though. This has led to countless individuals showing up and driving through their land past their home. Lots of people stop and ask for directions. However a few times it’s gone beyond a mere nuance. They’ve had people show up at their door in the middle of the night and some won’t take no for an answer when they tell them google maps has gone wrong. On two occasions this has led to extremely aggressive behavior. My in laws are quite old and as the family tech guy I got asked to step in. I’ve done the whole google maps support thing but no response and deaf ears. It’s now Google’s fault how people behave but maps have consequences on peoples lives.
Not for anyone that lives in rural areas. Trust me. I'm a consultant in a rural area in the PNW and Google maps is literally unusable to access 80% of my client's properties.
Living in Middle of Nowhere, New Mexico I was actually pretty surprised by how well Google Maps has worked. It knows my dirt/gravel roads pretty well.
I've lived in Washington for 10 years and I have found several roads I am familiar with that have changed due to landslides in that time. I would guess at least 10 roads in the state have washouts that change the course of the road every year. In the wilderness they often aren't repaired and become footpaths.
Google maps has marked my parents in laws drive way as a road. The drive way is quite long as they are on a farm. Due to a right of way for an owner of a field who owns an enclave within their land they can’t put a gate up. It’s quite unmistakable you are going into someone’s house though. This has led to countless individuals showing up and driving through their land past their home. Lots of people stop and ask for…
It seems like the obvious solution to this would be a large sign at the entrance to the driveway.
This is surprisingly common - a combination of target fixation and that hope that things will get better "just around the corner". People seem to be wired to push ahead instead of turn back and look for an easier route. I suppose a lot of exploration and discovery wouldn't have happened otherwise but then it's tempered by the numerous stories like the OP.
The biggest problem is blind trust in the system. This is how we get stories of people trusting GPS directions and driving straight into lakes. Taking a few minutes to zoom out and check the actual maps in terrain view would save most people on these journeys.
That wouldn't necessarily help in the given example. Desert stream beds often look very similar to roads on satellite and furthermore, data rates are abysmal in most of these places. You frequently can't load much beyond the cached basemap to check.
I ran into a surprising problem with Google maps recently. "Ok Google, driving directions to Fremont Central Park" Google locates the park address as 40000 Paseo Padre Pkwy, Fremont 94538. The pin is dropped in a fine place, at the building by the Lake Elizabeth boat ramp. I mostly know where I'm going anyway, and as I come up Washington Blvd I notice it's asking me to turn early, so I follow just for kicks. Inexplic…
That's pretty weird, thanks for reporting this! I work at Google in the Maps org, I reported your bug internally and will update this once I have a resolution. In the future, if you encounter a similar situation, consider reporting it ( https://support.google.com/maps/answer/6194894 ). Any user feedback is greatly appreciated!
Hey, thanks! Usually I use the in app reporting, but the thing about maps in particular is often when there's a problem I'm either driving or at my destination and need to go. In this case, I saw the story and then recalled the earlier issue. I figure talking about problems on HN has a very high probability of getting the attention of someone who can fix them ;)