Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road

tekdeeps.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 431 posts

Re: Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road

#141

Post by drdavid »

slickrick216 wrote: post #126

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…

Where I live, they'll send you down logging roads and old, disused roads fit only for 4WD trucks.

It's not just Google. Other GPS maps will send you to my house on a road that hasn't really been passable for 30 or 40 years - if you make the mistake of not telling it to avoid dirt roads. But, if you tell it to stick to paved roads, it'll have you park about 2 km away.

I have no idea how to fix this, except to suggest that they update the maps that the GPS relies on. It's such a remote area that it's not a priority for them. Every year we get a few people who think that GPS can't be wrong. Maybe if one of 'em dies and someone sues they'll get around to updating it.

Re: Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road

#142

Post by lostlogin »

yawnxyz wrote: post #123
voisin wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I’m guessing it’s a paper road that is legally accessible and whatever google’s source is, it’s not clear on that.

Re: Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road

#143

Post by lostlogin »

anonu wrote: post #103
varjag wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, I had a similar one in Northern Italy. What started as an offbeat paved, then gravel, road degraded into something best described as a goat trail over steep hillside. The worst thing is when you start having doubts it's too late: backing out is even more dangerous. AWD came helpful but still had a few white-knuckled moments there.

Not to downplay the seriousness: but "middle of Italy" doesn't really sound that bad. Middle of Russia or Middle of USA... could be deadly. Also middle of Russia way way worse than Middle of USA, as the article indicates.

-70 degrees centigrade is cold. The appropriate equipment for being outdoors in that is not something I’d even start to be able to prepare for.

Re: Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road

#144

Post by s0rce »

neffy wrote: post #136
nicoburns wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like the obvious solution to this would be a large sign at the entrance to the driveway.

It seems like the obvious solution to this would be for Google to provide a sensible way to accept corrections to their maps. We had to get a change made to Google maps to prevent people getting killed here, and it took national news, and personal contacts within the organisation. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

In the US its pretty easy to submit corrections. I've submitted a few corrections on US public lands but now I usually don't bother and just update open street map instead.

Re: Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road

#146

Post by s0rce »

NDizzle wrote: post #119
bitexploder wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Caltopo and forest service roads are the best for last mile backcountry driving in my experience. Google maps is indeed really sketchy in those situations.

The app Gaia GPS has MVUM (motor vehicle use maps by the US forest service) that are outstanding. You can use multiple map layers at once. You can use the Caltopo plus the MVUM to see which areas are open and passable.

The MVUM are great but I've found that there are still many county and locally maintained but non-private roads, which aren't in the federal USFS/BLM MVUM and make it a bit annoying to figure out whats actually open.

Re: Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road

#147

Post by lostlogin »

dr_orpheus wrote: post #21
ghaff wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US (especially in the West) there are a lot of roads that are seasonal and/or that should really only be tackled with appropriately equipped high-clearance 4WD with a driver who is familiar with driving under those conditions. Even a fairly straightforward off-paved road route like to the Racetrack in Death Valley, sees the local Jeep rental/tour company rescuing standard passenger car drivers all the time bec…

> because they get tire punctures with no or crappy rental car jacks, etc. (Or they change tires and the doughnut spare lasts for 5 minutes.) The sharp rocks of Death Valley and other super arid parts of Nevada was not something I had really thought about until I saw a picture of the car from one of my friends in Nevada. In addition to the normal full-size spare tire, there were two other tires stuck in the back of t…

I drove on a farm track in the Coromandel, New Zealand. The track was very steep and there was lots of wheel spinning getting through. The sharp rocks messed up the tyres. On closer inspection the rocks were bits of volcanic obsidian.

Re: Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road

#148

Post by lostlogin »

gambiting wrote: post #73
random5634 wrote: post #3

Here's a link with an image of the highway of bones: https://elpais.com/internacional/2020-12-23/perdidos-en-la-t... Here is a video of a drive along it between the cities mentioned in the article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J46vglp6g98 Insane cold in this area - I'd be curious what type of preparation they had for this, and why not turn back if things were impassable? Google in the USA maps lots of roads that a…

Is that not the road used by Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman in Long Way Round? Because if yes then that road was passable, but even in the summer they had to cross several streams and it looked like the only people driving it were locals in old 6x6 Kamaz Trucks.

If you excuse the episode where they behave like brats at not getting the bikes they wanted, the series is great (and so is “The long way down”).

Re: Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road

#149

Post by mdavidn »

hirundo wrote: post #34

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 had a similar experience this month in New Mexico. After ice and numerous accidents closed I-40, Apple Maps sent me on a two-hour detour through the Pueblo of Zuni, which, of course, was closed to non-tribal members to halt the spread of COVID-19.

Re: Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road

#150

Post by Swizec »

gambiting wrote: post #73
random5634 wrote: post #3

Here's a link with an image of the highway of bones: https://elpais.com/internacional/2020-12-23/perdidos-en-la-t... Here is a video of a drive along it between the cities mentioned in the article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J46vglp6g98 Insane cold in this area - I'd be curious what type of preparation they had for this, and why not turn back if things were impassable? Google in the USA maps lots of roads that a…

Is that not the road used by Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman in Long Way Round? Because if yes then that road was passable, but even in the summer they had to cross several streams and it looked like the only people driving it were locals in old 6x6 Kamaz Trucks.

Long Way Round was 16 years ago. Lots can change in that time.
Post reply on HN